Fade To Black
by R-I-C-A-R-D
Summary: Post Sovereign. Captured by batarians, Shepard finds herself an unwilling participant in a brutal form of 'sport.' Her very survival is at stake as her captors aim to increase falling ratings. Complete.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**This is an idea that's been floating around in my mind for a while. Inspiration for this fic is drawn from several sources: the Richard Bachman/Stephen King novel _The Running Man_ where, in the future, the highest rated TV show concerns people being hunted down for sport, the remake of the film _Death Race _where, again, people (in this case convicts in armour-plated vehicles with big guns) are pitted against each other in a race to the death (naturally) all for the satisfaction of a blood-lusting public and finally, the video game _Manhunt_ that came out several years ago.

For those familiar with my previous Mass Effect work, there's nothing to laugh at here. Except maybe by accident. Also, things may get a little bloody.

_'Cause I need to watch things die  
…from a distance…  
Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies  
You all need it too  
Don't lie_

Tool, Vicarious

Prologue: A Ratings Slump

Karrick glared disgustedly at the images on the vidscreen; a human mercenary captured in the Sentry Omega system was on his knees, begging for mercy. _Begging_. How the humans had managed to inflict such heavy losses on the batarians at Torfan was a mystery to Karrick.

Onscreen, the mercenary, his hardsuit breached in several places looked up in supplication at the turian hunter who had run him to ground. Tears mixed with blood coursed down the man's stubbled cheeks. _Pathetic._

"P-please, d-don't do this..." the merc could be heard pleading courtesy of one of the many thousands of hidden cameras and microphones that dotted the abandoned urban sprawl where the hunts took place.

_"Stand up and fight, you worthless piece of varren shit!" _the turian snarled, administering a brutal pistol-whip. The human's head snapped to the side and the cameras zoomed in to better capture images of blood spraying from his burst lips.

Slumping to the ground, weeping, the human curled himself into a ball.

Karrick shook his head, mouthing a litany of batarian curses. "Turn it off," he ordered. The screen went black just as the turian, finally tired of toying with his victim, pressed the barrel of his sidearm against the man's forehead and fired.

Karrick crossed the room to a bar hewn from solid bethel wood and poured a glass of green liquor for both himself and his business partner, Jorik. Accepting the glass, Jorik consulted a datapad in his other hand.

"Ratings this month are down by five percent compared with this time last year," he informed the other batarian. Five percent may not have sounded like much to some, but when dealing with viewers numbering in the millions, even a slump of five percent was a concern.

"And what of our sponsors?" Karrick enquired. Sponsors of the hunts included Batarian State Arms who had invested millions of credits in the games over the years and provided most of the firearms and hardsuits used by the hunters.

"Koth Incorporated are threatening to pull support for next year's games," Jorik answered, calmly meeting Karrick's four-eyed gaze without blinking.

"Koth? To hell with them, then. I'm sick of dealing with that slime of a volus," Karrick spat. "That being said, we need to do something to reverse this ratings slump. People are getting tired of seeing the same worthless pirates and mercenaries hunting each other down."  
"What do you suggest?" Jorik asked, sipping his drink. "Air another varren and elcor special?" Jorik smiled as he remembered the pack of varren surrounding and tearing apart the hapless elcor. Ah, the memories.

"No, we need something...special to convince people to tune in." Karrick paced back and forth in his office, past the trophies mounted on the walls. Each head he had personally severed from the body of its previous owner. Most of the heads were those of humans with a smattering of krogan and turian here and there.

As Jorik watched his fellow batarian pace the floor, a thought occurred to him, "Maybe an old-fashioned grudge match? Say krogan against turians? Heh, toss in some of those spindly salarians as well. We could bill it as the chance for krogan to get even with the bastards who neutered them after the Krogan Rebellions."

"Perhaps," Karrick allowed, "If nothing else, krogan in full battle-lust are always good viewing. But I think I may have something more...interesting in mind."

Karrick turned back to Jorik, a smile growing on his face. "Set up a link with our contacts to the Shadow Broker; I want to know where the human ship, _Normandy_ will be enjoying its next leave."

----

Shepard hadn't been this drunk in years and placed the blame for her present state of inebriation squarely on First Lieutenant Hayley Storm. The Lieutenant, nicknamed Hailstorm, had been part of Shepard's reconstituted crew aboard the SSV _Normandy_ since just after the Sovereign Incident in 2183. After Sovereign, and the extended shore leave granted to the _Normandy's _crew, several officers and crew had requested transfers to other ships in the Systems Alliance fleet, figuring that a stint on the ship at the centre of the battle for the galaxy's very survival would get them the posting of their choosing. Shepard's former XO Pressly had applied for, and been granted, a position as navigator on the dreadnought _Everest_ and other key members of Shepard's crew had parted ways as well.

Upon Shepard's recommendation, Garrus Vakarian, former investigator with Citadel Security had been accepted into the Spectres, no doubt enraging his by the book father. Having completed her pilgrimage by acquiring crucial information on geth sentience and their evolution as a synthetic species, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya had left the _Normandy _and began the long trip to rejoin her people aboard the quarian flotilla. Finally, Dr Liara T'soni, who had devoted fifty years of her life to studying the long-extinct Protheans was currently leading a research expedition to the Prothean sanctuary of Ilos, in the hopes of uncovering more details on how the Protheans had lived.

For Shepard, saying goodbye to Liara had hurt her almost physically. Scuttlebutt aboard ship during the hunt for Saren Arterius had been rife regarding Liara's attraction to the human Commander and whether or not Shepard would give into her own attraction toward the asari. In the end, however, Shepard had forced herself to look at the bigger picture - the rogue turian Spectre had been attempting to open a path along which a race of sentient machines could invade Citadel Space with the aim of extinguishing all organic life.

Shepard understood that, if she were to maintain the focus and drive needed to end Saren's mad crusade, she couldn't afford to allow the walls she had built up around herself since Akuze to crumble. After Akuze, after seeing her squad mates, her friends slaughtered by threshers right before her eyes, being unable to save them, Shepard had felt a depth of loss so great, it had been all she could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Forget about forming any kind of relationship with people, why bother, when they'd likely all die anyway, leaving her alone once more. Then she met Liara. Over time, during long talks with the asari, first about the Protheans and then about Liara herself, Shepard began to feel the barriers she'd placed around herself starting to crack. It had terrified her - seeing the admiration in Liara's eyes rapidly become something more.

_Don't allow yourself to fall for her,_ Shepard warned herself. _You fell for O'Donnell and you remember how _that_ turned out.  
_Serviceman Michael O'Donnell had been the first to fall on Akuze. He and Shepard had been bantering back and forth over a private comm link, enjoying each other's company, even in the field when the ground beneath them first shook then burst apart, dirt and rocks erupting in a wide arc.

The thresher, a massive column of flesh topped by an immense ring of teeth reared above them, emitting a deep booming roar that Shepard felt through her chest cavity. O'Donnell had been standing right over where the thresher's head emerged. A single snap of its jaws later, and both halves of O'Donell's body thudded to the ground, still twitching. At the time, then-Lieutenant Shepard had been too shocked to feel much of anything. The pain came later.

Years later Shepard farewelled Liara T'soni, doing her best to fight the tears she felt growing in her eyes. _I'm sorry, Liara, I know how you feel about me, but I won't put you through what I went through. It almost destroyed me and I won't visit that same pain upon you. _It was only after Liara's shuttle departed the Citadel docks that Shepard allowed herself to cry.

All of these personnel movements left the _Normandy's _commanding officer with several slots on the crew roster to fill. Fifth Fleet brass had forwarded several dossiers to Shepard, and First Lieutenant Storm had caught Shepard's attention. The woman had seen action on Torfan, under the command of Major Kyle and had distinguished herself during the fighting, not least because she'd actually survived while seventy-five percent of her comrades had perished during the brutal close-quarters battle.

With the loss of Lieutenant Alenko during the disaster that had been Virmire, Storm's technical expertise and her abilities with a sniper rifle had earned her a place on Shepard's ground team, post Sovereign. After Sovereign, everything had changed - the loss of so many of the Council races' ships had meant that the largely unscathed Fifth Fleet had to pick up most of the slack in patrolling and securing Citadel Space. Humanity had won for itself a position on the Council and Shepard's former commanding officer, Captain Anderson had done well in representing his people on the galactic stage.

But, as ever, forces were at work in the galaxy, threatening the fragile stability of Citadel Space. Taking advantage of the disarray in the fleets, pirates and slavers carried out lightning raids on colonies near the edges of the Terminus Systems, sacking worlds and killing or enslaving tens of thousands of civilians.

For several months, the _Normandy_ had been part of a task force comprising dozens of cruiser and frigate class vessels, destroying as much of the slaver operations as possible, in addition to securing those systems that hadn't been hit yet.

Finally, however, the bulk of the slaver rings had been smashed and the surviving pirate and slaver ships had retreated back into the Terminus Systems. Shepard hadn't been sorry to see them go.

The crew of the _Normandy_ was now enjoying a much-deserved week-long leave on Elysium, itself a past target of slaver attacks.

Shepard sat at the bar in a club that seemed to be channelling Chora's Den, right down to the scantily clad asari dancers and drunks ogling them.

"God, Shepard, you always take us to the very best places," Storm had commented dryly when they'd first entered. The tall blonde officer observed the dancers and the drunks and shook her head. _B__loody perverts_. The thought flashed through her mind almost before she was aware of it.

"What can I say? At least the local yokels are going to be too busy eying off the girls to bother much with us," the Spectre had answered, leading her fellow officer to the bar. Shepard ordered a drink and, as the saying goes, the drink took a drink then the drink took the man.

Presently, the Spectre sat at the bar, propping her head up with one hand and fighting the urge to vomit. The pounding techno music that seemed to be all the rage these days seemed to match the throbbing of the pulse in her head and neck.

"Storm, I don't think I can walk. I'm so hammered..." she slurred. The other woman had suggested some kind of perverse drinking game that, like most such things, had seemed like a good idea at the time only now, both officers were cataclysmically smashed and the marines they'd arrived with had already left.

Storm gazed blearily at her CO before levering herself up off the barstool and throwing her arm across Shepard's shoulders.

"Come on, soldier, let's get you back home," Storm instructed, easing Shepard onto her feet.

Shepard took a half-step, reeling from side to side, before collapsing onto the floor.

"Shit," Hailstorm muttered before turning to the bartender, "Can I get some help here?"

The bartender rolled his eyes at the officer's request. _Bloody soldiers, coming into my place, getting so drunk they can't even stand up._ The trade from soldiers on leave kept his place nice and profitable but by God, they could be _so_ inconvenient.

"Fine, fine. Luke, Riley, give 'em a hand," he directed two other bar staff.

Eventually, Storm, with the help of the staff managed to get the semi-conscious Spectre outside and into the rain that had started to fall.

The cold, heavy rain drops spattered into the top of Shepard's head, the wetness going some way to bringing her around. "Uh, what the hell?" she moaned, slumping against the rough brick wall of the club.

"You got falling-down drunk," Storm cheerfully replied, wiping rain from her own face. "Girl, you're getting too old for that kind of shit."  
"Screw you, Hayles," Shepard shot back, starting to feel more herself. She levered herself off the wall, trying to ignore the feelings of vertigo and the sensation that the ground wasn't quite steady. "The drinking contest was _your idea_."

"Yeah and you being the senior officer, you should've known better than to go along with it," Storm bantered back as they set off away from the club, hopefully in the direction of the port.

After several minutes of unsteady, staggering progress, Shepard blurted out, "I don't rem...remember where we parked the ship!"

Storm tipped her head back and laughed.

Standing in the shadows in an alleyway opposite the humans' position, a pair of batarians observed the shambling progress of their target.

"Are you sure that's her?" one asked. His compatriot double checked the image displayed on his omni-tool, careful to conceal the instrument's amber glow, lest it give them away.

"It's her. Shepard. Drunk out of her mind," he shook his head, amused, "This is going to be too easy."  
"What about the other one?"

Shrugging, the second batarian shut off his omni-tool before removing the stunner from his belt. "We'll take her too. Knowing Karrick, he'll want to have some...fun with them before giving them to the hunters."

Nodding in agreement, the two batarians slipped silently from their shadowed nook and moved in on the humans.

The rain was both a blessing and a curse, Storm decided. It was a blessing because the coldness of the water and the reduced air temperature was quickly bringing both herself and her CO to a slightly higher state of alertness. It was a curse because it meant that, when they got back to the _Normandy_, it'd mean she'd have to get changed before hitting the sleeper pod, and Storm just wanted to sleep.

As the two officers made slow progress along the rain-slicked street, their pursuers quietly gained on them. The hissing of the rain as it struck and rebounded from the road surface served to render their approaching footfalls undetectable. The lead batarian touched his companion's arm, then pointed to the blonde human; his companion nodded and moved to the left while the other stepped towards Shepard.

Just as Hailstorm thought they were making pretty good progress back to the docks, Shepard suddenly broke away from her and staggered to the gutter, retching.

"Ah, geez," Storm muttered, eyes rolling. With a sigh she turned to her CO; Shepard leaned forward, hands braced on knees, breathing raggedly. "God damn," she moaned.

As she moved to assist Shepard, Hailstorm caught a flicker of motion in her peripheral vision and turned.

Eyes widening, the Lieutenant observed the pair of batarians running at them and shouted a warning, "Shepard! We got hostiles incoming!"

"Wha?" the Spectre wiped her lips with the back of one shaky hand and straightened up. The four-eyed alien was on her almost before she knew what was happening.

Reeling backwards, totally losing her equilibrium, Shepard threw a wild punch at her assailant. The batarian easily ducked it and struck the woman in the face with his stunner. With a single strangled cry, the human fell back to the road amid the rain puddles, limbs awkwardly bent.

Hailstorm managed to duck the first jab of her attacker's stunner but the cry from her superior caused her to lose focus for a precious second and pain like thousands needles piercing her skin ripped through her. Storm collapsed to her knees in an oily puddle, struggling mightily to stay conscious.

It was a losing battle though, and with a final look at Shepard, lying senseless nearby, Lieutenant Storm's world faded to black.

A/N: I wanted to have another shot at writing a 'properly serious' fanfic. Not that I don't get a kick out of making with the funny, I just want to try something else for a while. I also wanted to add in some detail on Shepard's refusal to hook up with anybody - I like the idea of her being strong and resilient on the outside but unable to let anyone close in case she gets hurt again. As always reviews are appreciated. I hope to have an update posted in a couple of weeks. Keep watching the skies.


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One: What Fate Befell Her

One by one, her body began to register various sensations and dutifully passed them along the neural pathways to her brain for processing.

Coldness and the feeling of something smooth and metallic against the skin of her face. A faint hum, barely perceptible, felt more than heard. Subconsciously, her mind analysed this new piece of information and offered up the theory that she was aboard a vessel under FTL flight.

_Where?_ Silence was her only response.

Another, less pleasant sensation: a dull full-body ache made itself apparent as her mind clawed its way toward full wakefulness. _Something's not right_. It felt as though somebody had placed a metal band around her head and was tightening it by degrees; she felt her pulse beat too-rapidly in her temples, heard the blood roaring in her ears, like the way she could hear the ocean when she placed a seashell to her ear as a child.

Thoughts of her childhood sparked other, random thoughts and soon she was taking a disjointed walk down memory lane.

_She was nine years old and at school, being pushed around by a small clique of older girls who had singled her out because of her gawkiness and the braces on her teeth. Her older brother, Julian descended upon them, seemingly out of nowhere and put the frighteners on them. The girls scattered and ran. Julian hugged his little sister, told her not to worry, he'd always be there for her._

_Her memories jolted forward a full decade - she was being chewed out by an instructor after royally screwing up a training exercise on Arcturus Station; had the cadet officer's actions carried real-life consequences, her squad would be so much cooling meat by now._

_You need to wake up_

_Another memory, this one more recent. Torfan. Her unit decimated, she called desperately over the comm for reinforcements. There were none. Beside her, Serviceman Parker fell back, half his face blown off. His remaining eye, shockingly blue amid the blood seemed to be pleading with her to help him._

Lieutenant Hayley Storm jerked awake, lips clamping down tight, biting back the scream.

---

Even as she came to, Shepard knew her situation was badly compromised. Slowly, her eyes opened, only to find an impenetrable blackness. _Am I blind? _was the first, panicked thought. Blinking rapidly, unaware that she was emitting a low moan, the Spectre forced herself into a half-sitting position. Even through the unremitting darkness, she could feel the world spin erratically about her. Feeling her gorge rise, Shepard fought a brief battle with herself to not vomit. She lost. Coughing weakly, utterly spent, Shepard wiped a hand across her lips.

Even with her hand held up before her wide open eyes, Shepard couldn't see it. _I'd rather die than live the rest of my life like this._

As though a star had manifested itself in the room with her, the darkness was suddenly banished by a brilliant, agonising light. Shepard's eyelids slammed shut, purple after images dancing behind them. Tears leaking from her eyes, the Spectre pressed both hands against her face, trying without success to block out hard white light.

"They always react the same way, have you ever noticed that?" Va'ath commented from the other side of the observation window. The turian tapped a taloned finger to his chin in thought. "Although I must concede that if _I _had spent the past thirty-odd hours in a lightless box, and was recovering from an immense hang over, I'd probably be curled up like that too, when the lights came up."

"Bah, humans are just weak," Belith opined, voice hard. The turian turned to the other hunter, appraising him as he had the human captive. In Va'ath's opinion, the batarian was too quick to judge, and his preconceptions blinded him to new possibilities. Such preconceptions would likely get him killed, one day. Va'ath hoped to be there to see it happen.

"No, not weak. Not this one at least," the third member of the trio muttered. Belith's four eyes rolled. Va'ath nodded at the krogan to continue.

"That is Shepard, isn't it?" Bex enquired. The turian nodded again, dark skin contrasting with his white tribal markings.

"Shepard, survivor of Akuze, saviour of the Citadel," Bex stared intently at the woman inside the holding cell. She had yet to uncurl herself from the foetal position and a low moan carried through the speakers. "It isn't right, her being treated like this," the krogan finally stated.

"Pfft! I didn't take _you _for a human-lover, Bex!" the batarian scoffed. Wordlessly Bex turned, seized the batarian by the shoulders and slammed him against the clear-steel observation window.

Inside her cell, the captive jerked at the sound.

Pinning the struggling batarian to the window, Bex leaned right into his face, nostrils flaring with rage. "I respect warriors, batarian scum. Shepard," Bex jerked his head towards the woman, "_Is_ a warrior. _You_ are just a carrion feeder. Warriors deserve better treatment than to be locked in a cage like animals."  
Breath coming in harsh gasps, Belith snapped, voice shrill, "Humans _are_ animals! _Krogan are animals!"_

Before Va'ath could do anything to stop the krogan, he unsheathed a blade as long as his forearm and rammed it, hilt deep into Belith's chest. Bex dropped the batarian and left without a word.

Looking down at the Belith's corpse, standing well back from the spreading pool of blood, Va'ath said with broadly flaring mandibles, "Well, I guess I was there to see your preconceptions get you killed, after all." Bending over the corpse, the turian worked the blade back and forth until it came free. The krogan would likely want his weapon back.

Shepard listened as the second set of foot steps echoed away into the distance and tentatively opened her eyes. This time, the glare wasn't as bad. Or maybe her eyes were finally adjusting to it. Bracing herself on the cold metal floor, Shepard climbed upright. She staggered slightly, supporting herself against the window. Her pounding headache was the least of her worries, she belatedly realised. Slumped against the outside of the window lay a dead batarian. Swallowing in an attempt to relieve the dryness in her mouth, the Spectre took in her surroundings.

The cell she was in - for it was certain she was somebody's captive - was bare grey metal with only the light panel in the ceiling and a metal toilet with no seat to break the featurelessness. Shepard amended her survey as she noticed, high up in one corner, the blinking red light of a surveillance camera. She heard a faint whirr as it kept her in focus.

Outside was a corridor, more gunmetal grey, more evenly spaced lighting panels in the ceiling. Opposite her position was another cell, identical to hers. It was empty though Shepard saw through the glass barriers pools of what was probably blood on the floor. Red.

A thought slowly dawned on her. "Where's Hailstorm?"

Then another. "Where am I?"

---

Walking rapidly, talons clicking against the deck, Va'ath soon caught up with Bex. Idly, Va'ath twirled the long-bladed dagger between his fingers. The balance felt a little skewed to him but it clearly served the krogan well enough.

"Bex," he quietly addressed the krogan. Without turning from cell, and the captive within, Bex held out his right hand. Va'ath flipped the dagger around and placed it, handle first, in the krogan's hand. "Thanks," he rumbled and sheathed the blade at his waist.

Stepping up beside his fellow hunter, Va'ath nodded at the human woman inside the cell. She was seated in a corner, knees drawn up to her chest, back pressed hard against the wall as though hoping to escape through it via osmosis. "This is the one captured with Shepard?"

"She is," the krogan nodded his green-crested head. He studied the human with dark red eyes. She too had the look of a warrior, her brown eyes met his gaze unflinchingly. Briefly, she broke eye contact and shot a look at the turian.

There was no small amount of fear in the woman's eyes, Va'ath saw. Not that he blamed her. But she was holding onto her nerve remarkably better than some of the captives he'd seen in his time. Mewling wretches, with their wailing and gnashing of teeth.

"Has she spoken yet?" he asked the krogan, mind on the standing wager between them - typically, the average captive would blurt out something woefully predictable like _Why are you doing this to me? _or the equally unoriginal _Who are you people?_

"I'm betting she opens with _where are you taking me?_" Va'ath predicted, feeling confident. She had that look about her, this flaxen-haired woman clad in the rumpled uniform of the human Alliance Marine Corp.

Bex shook his head, "No, she'll want to know what fate befell her ally. At least I would, in her position."

"Let's find out, shall we?" Va'th said and pressed a button set into the door frame, activating the microphone. "Hello in there," he greeted the human, voice deceptively pleasant.

The woman stared hard at him before replying. Va'ath leaned in a little closer to the glass, so he wouldn't miss a word.

"What have you done with the Commander?" the captive answered, voice pitched low, fear well concealed. Va'ath slumped back. Without a word he opened a pocket on his hardsuit, plucked out a fifty-credit chit and passed it to the krogan.

Bex smiled widely, exposing a great many fangs. "Do not worry too much, human. Shepard is alive. You'll see each other again, I imagine. Though in less pleasant circumstances than you might hope for."

"What do mean?"  
It was the turian who answered, "Oh, you'll find out." Va'ath closed the channel. Turning back to Bex he asked, "You feel like lunch?"

---

"Karrick, the _Vengeance _has arrived in-system and her captain reports success in the latest capture runs," Jorik informed the other batarian, having just received word of the ship's arrival.

"Excellent. Shepard is unharmed?"

"Badly hung over and dehydrated but no permanent damage. The _Vengeance _reports that a second human female was taken along with the Spectre," Jorik went on.

"Good, maybe they can be made to kill one another. The viewers always enjoy that. Once the _Vengeance_ is docked, I want Shepard brought to me."

---

"I'm tellin' ya, one'a Karrick's capture teams pulled in a Spectre," Karn told his drinking buddy, scooping up a handful of nuts from the the bowl on the bar top.

"How can you eat that stuff?" his friend replied with a mock shudder.

"Uh, you take a handful of nuts, pop 'em in your mouth and chew. See?"

"The people who paw through the bowl of complimentary nuts are the _same _people who never wash their hands after using the facilities," Lurn explained, watching the action on the wall-sized vidscreen.

"That's...that's disgusting."

"Anyway," Lurn went on, enjoying his friend's discomfiture, "how could a _Spectre _let himself be grabbed like that? Where'd you even hear that...oh did you _see _that? The Reaver just about blew that guy in half with his shotgun."

"_And that's the Reaver's fourteenth kill of the season! Ladies and gentlemen, that krogan just will not be stopped!"_

"Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Anyway, I read about the Spectre on the extranet. It's a woman, by the way."

"Oh, he _read it on the extranet!_ So it _must _be true!" Lurn scoffed.

Ignoring him, Karn waved the bartender over. "Can I have some more nuts?"

---

Time passed. How much, Storm didn't know. The chronometer normally worn around her left wrist was gone, revealing the five-pointed star tattooed on the inside of her wrist, a birthday present to herself, to mark her eighteenth. For the sake of symmetry, she'd gone back to the tattooist and had the same pattern inked into her right wrist. Storm shook her head, hoping to encourage coherent thought and a few loose strands of hair whipped around. Absently, she tucked them back behind her ear.

"OK, think. Reason things out. They took your watch so you can't mark the passage of time. Classic method of putting a captive off balance. Fine. So who's _they_? Batarians...they've had a beef with the Commander ever since that X57 incident a while back. This some kind of payback? Why not just kill us, we were both drunk enough so as to pose no real resistance. A ransom demand? Makes no sense..."

Storm looked up from the floor as she heard booted foot steps approaching from the left. A pair of tall humanoids stood outside the glass, hardsuited, heads covered with full-face helmets, visors darkened. They each held an assault rifle and Storm noted the cuffs dangling from their belts.

Cuffs implied that they meant to restrain her before taking her someplace else, at least the Lieutenant hoped so. Could be they just wanted to mess with her mind and simply intended to take her outside, put her against a wall and riddle her with mass accelerator rounds. _Hell of lot of trouble to go to, just for that._

Storm cautiously stood upright, trying not to visibly wince at the pins and needles sensation in her legs.

"Step away from the door," a deep male voice ordered. The man's voice had a metallic-sounding quality, no doubt an effect of the helmet's comm circuitry. Storm backed up until the heels of her boots hit the rear wall.

The door to her cell slid open and both guards trained their rifles on her chest. "Turn around," the second man ordered and she complied, hoping they merely meant to cuff her hands behind her back...rather than something else.

Footsteps drew up behind her and one of the men quickly pat her down, and, finding nothing that could serve as a weapon, pulled her arms behind her back and slipped the cuffs around her wrists. The metal of the bracelets felt icy against her skin.

"Turn around. Move."

Staring hard into the man's visor, attempting to see past the tinting, Storm saw only her own darkened reflection. She doubled over, gasping as he rammed the rifle stock into her stomach, hard.

"When I say _move_, you _move!" _he snarled. The harshness of his accent as he spoke the standard trade language convinced Storm that her new friends, the one who'd hit her at least, were batarians.

_This can't be good_.

Suppressing a groan as she straightened up, the Lieutenant again looked into the batarian's helmet, saw her lips move as she quipped, "Take me to your leader." She gave him a small, mocking smile.

This time, the rifle butt struck her in the face, opening a gash above her right eye. Unable to break her fall, Hayley's head met the floor with enough force to render her insensible.

"Why do you always do that to them?" the other batarian snapped.

"She disrespected me!"

"There's a reason humans think we're all barbaric savages, and that reason is people like you."

"Don't start with me. Bad enough I have to pick up this piece of human _filth_ because she's too stupid to _walk_," he kicked her in the ribs, "When I tell her to walk!"

"And there you go again," his long-suffering compatriot muttered as they hauled the woman out of the cell.

A second team of guards walked the corridor to Shepard's cell. A Spectre, now _that_ was something to brag about.

"Be careful with this one, they say she's biotic."

"And I suppose _they_ also say she can chew nails and spit out thumbtacks, too. Oh and breathe fire."  
"Fine, don't believe me but don't say I didn't warn if you end up turned into a bloody pile of raw meat after she warps the very fabric of your being. Don't laugh, I've seen those damnable asari commando units do the same thing."

"Well why don't we just stun the bitch and be done with it?"  
"Because Karrick wants to...talk to her."  
"Then let Karrick come down and get her."

"I'll be sure to pass along to him that you said that...alright we're here. Prisoner, step away from the door."

The woman, tall and well-muscled without appearing mannish looked tired and washed out. A casual onlooker would be hard-pressed to know she was an agent of the Special Reconnaissance and Tactics arm of the Citadel Council.

"Tell me what you did with the other officer I was with."

"Step away from the door. Now."

"Or what? You'll shoot me? Go ahead, do it. I'm feeling fairly addled-headed just at the moment but even I can tell you didn't go to the trouble of capturing me just to have me shot. Consequently, you need me alive for some reason. So, to make things easier on all of us, tell me what I want to know."

"All you need to know, _human_, is that the boss wants to see you. Whether you get to him under your own power or not, is entirely up to you. For the last time, Step. Away. From. The. Door," the batarian bit off the words one at a time.

The human's bloodshot eyes were defeated by his visor in their attempt to lock with his own eyes. The guard could see the fury simmering within the human. Finally though, she stood back.

The batarian entered, cuffed her and led her away.

A/N: This chapter came out faster than I'd imagined. Thanks for the reviews so far.


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two: Hands

The starport the ship had docked at was a hive of activity - freighters landed and were unloaded by workers bearing slave collars around their throats. Many of them were human with the occasional salarian or asari among them. Whatever their race, they all bore the same resigned look on their faces and moved with the same stoop shouldered shuffling gait. Batarians in black armour walked the perimeter of the port and snipers maintained overwatch from guard towers.

Occasionally, a slave stumbled attempting to move a heavy piece of cargo and would receive a lash from a neural whip. Shepard cursed inwardly at the cries of pain.

Shepard twisted her head from side to side as she walked, hoping to see the Lieutenant but, aside from a few other humans who had apparently been captured as well, there was nobody else she knew.

As her captors herded her towards a waiting vehicle, the Spectre looked up at the night sky, attempting to locate any familiar stars or planetary bodies that would give her an inkling of where she was but found nothing familiar. A hand shoved her forward, its owner apparently dissatisfied with her progress. Shepard faced forward again, taking in as much of her surroundings as she could, committing them to memory.

Her footsteps as she walked towards the vehicle felt lighter than usual; this was probably a lower-G world. The atmosphere was evidently breathable without an environment suit though whether that was the result of a terra-forming project or not, Shepard couldn't be sure. The air felt cool and dry and the faint breeze carried the odour of exhaust fumes from the ships.

Shepard and her escorts reached the vehicle - it resembled a prison van like the one she'd seen in old vids, and sat on four wide-profile tyres. The vehicle's armour-plated hull was painted matte black.

Turning her head to face the helmeted batarian to her right, Shepard said, "You guys have a real fetish for black, don't you? And those helmets? It's like something out of a kinky porno. What are you guys doing here? Aside from slaving, obviously? Making bad amateur skin flicks?"

Ignoring her, the batarian slammed a fist into the side of the van and a door at the rear slid open, revealing two long, narrow benches. There were no other occupants in the rear.

"Let's see if you're as flippant once you meet the boss. Get in."

Shepard ducked her head beneath the rear hatchway and settled herself on the right hand bench. As she sat, hands still cuffed behind her, an audible gurgle came from her stomach, pointedly reminding her that she'd had nothing to eat since...she didn't no how long.

The two guards sat opposite her, assault rifles resting in their laps, faceless helmets revealing nothing.

The van's rear door hissed shut as it drove off, cutting off her view of the spaceport.

---

"The thing you gotta understand about humans is that they're completely unpredictable," Karn said, scooping up yet another handful of nuts from the bowl on the bar.

"No, no they're not," Lurn shook his head, gazing at the wallscreen. He pointed to the images of a well-built human male running for his life across the cracked and broken road surface. The man threw a glance over his shoulder every few steps, terror clearly marked on his features.

"See that?"  
"Yeah?"  
"He's running."  
"And?" Karn said, pausing to chew, "What's your point?"  
"My point is, running for your life when being pursued by the Twins is entire predictable. Which tends to discount your assertion that humans are unpredictable."

The image changed to that of a pair of asari huntresses - known as the Twins, who with their long, loping strides were quickly closing in on the fleeing human.

Lurn nodded towards the screen, "In my opinion, _unpredictable_ would be that chump turning around and heading right at the girls. He'd be slaughtered in seconds but what's he accomplishing by running?"

"Um...Hey Kirin, you've been around humans, tell this idiot how unpredictable they can be," Karn made this appeal to the volus bartender.

With a hissing intake of breath, Kirin replied, "Well, batarian-clan, whilst it has been my experience that the Earth-clan are indeed capable of acting in an unpredictable manner at times," Kirin paused to take another gasp of ammonia through his suit before continuing, "Your companion raises a valid point. Fleeing from the huntresses _is_ entirely predictable."

Lurn looked triumphantly at his friend. "See? Oh...that's gotta hurt!" Lurn winced in sympathy as, onscreen one of the Twins, an expression of joy on her beauteous face, cut the man's legs off at the knee. Her sister, a smile beaming from her equally gorgeous face lopped off his arms, one at a time.

The man's piercing screams rang out through the tavern, drawing hoots of derision from the mostly batarian crowd.

Onscreen, the asari twins had linked arms and were dancing around their latest victim.

"Who would have thought that slicing a person to death like that could be so much fun to watch? Those girls...I wonder if they have a fan club?"

"Right, Karn, like they'd be interested in hearing from _you._ I heard they only ever have it off with the females of other races, anyhow."  
"Hey, I'd pay to watch that!"

The two batarians clicked their beer steins together.

---

After being knocked cold by the batarians, Storm had come to in the rear of what turned out to be a prison van. The van halted inside a cavernous garage and Storm, along with four other captives - all bearing the same stunned expressions - were herded out by a pair of batarians clad in the now-familiar black hardsuits and helmets.

Storm's head ached and dried blood had crusted into her eyebrow. _Maybe next time you'll think twice before mouthing off at gun-wielding batarians_ she chided herself.

The other four captives, all human men, were separated from the Lieutenant and marched deeper into the complex by one of the guards. The other aimed his rifle at her head and jerked his own in the direction of a nearby elevator.  
"Are you going to be a good girl and walk when I tell you to or do you require another object lesson?"

Storm merely eyed the batarian and for a brief moment imagined him in the digital sights of her sniper rifle. _Slip up even once, batarian, and I'll make sure it's the last thing you do._

"Lead on," was all she said.

Hands still cuffed behind her, Storm began walking across the grease and oil stained floor of the vehicle garage, trying to observe the activity around her without drawing another blow to the head from her new friend. Technicians and mechanics serviced vehicles ranging from basic trucks and cargo haulers to military vehicles similar in size to an Alliance Mako.

The elevator loomed ahead of them and Hailstorm wandered why she had been separated from the others, what the batarians intended to do with her and what had become of Commander Shepard.

The interior of the elevator was similar to that of the cell she'd woken up in. "You guys have really cornered the market on drab interior design," she smirked. She couldn't help herself, stressful situations brought out the sarcastic quips. Eyes closed, she waited for the blow to fall. It didn't. The batarian hadn't reacted at all. Cautiously, Storm's eyes opened and she glanced up at the display of floor numbers above the lift doors. Though she couldn't read what was likely batarian numerals, each light blinked on and off in sequence as the lift ascended.

The lift came to a stop and doors opened, revealing more of the same grey interior design and lighting panels. Storm forced herself to bite her tongue, the pain reminding her not to say or do anything to make her situation worse. "Get out," her escort ordered.

Storm began walking along the corridor. Doors spaced along both sides of the corridor at regular intervals were closed and locked down - as evidenced by the red-lit control panels. Eyeing them as they passed by, Storm observed that they conformed to the standard type used throughout the galaxy and could be easily cracked with a standard omni-tool.

_That's comforting to know. If I ever get my hands on an omni-tool._

Human and batarian halted before the door at the end of the hall. Like the others, the control panel glowed red. The batarian positioned his body so as to block her view of the panel and tapped in a code. The panel turned green as the door slid aside.

Entering the room, Storm's eyes widened as they took in the mounted heads on display.

"Welcome, human. I am Karrick."  
Her wide eyed gaze snapped from the heads to the man wearing what she assumed was the batarian equivalent of business attire. She observed that Karrick wore a sidearm on his hip though his body language and demeanour seemed as non-threatening as the situation could allow.

"You must have many questions and I will answer what I can. Would you care for some refreshments?" Karrick spoke standard well and without the harsh accent of the guards from the ship.

"Why don't we skip the pleasantries? Where's Shepard and what are you planning to do with us?"

"Very well. I am what you might call an entrepreneur-"

"Oh, so that's what you call being a slaver these days?"

Karrick raised a hand and shook his head. Looking over her shoulder, Storm saw the guard lower his gun from where it had been about ready to strike.

"I run the most successful sporting events in this sector of space," he paused and again Storm eyed the severed heads.

"As you may have surmised, these sports involve the hunting of sentient beings. Most of them are worthless pirates or other scum but occasionally our capture teams pull in you Alliance types. And Spectres. You will participate in the latest round of hunts. If you are very lucky you may even survive more than a few minutes. You must understand that the viewers weary of seeing the same thing day in and day out. They want something more...you are that something more."  
"I'll die before I compete in any..sports," she snapped, stiffening with anger.

Karrick sighed before grasping his pistol and disengaging the safety. "If I had a credit for every time I've heard that...I could retire a very rich man." Pointing the weapon at her, Karrick went on, "Where do you want it? The head or the gut?"

Storm felt her eyes widen as her heart rate ramped up. Sweat suddenly form on her forehead and she hated herself for showing fear. The batarian smiled, "You humans are all the same. You carelessly throw out declarations that you are ready to die but I can see the fear in your eyes. You are not ready. But you soon will be, I think."

Still holding the gun on her, Karrick addressed the guard standing behind her, "Take her away."

---

Rygon looked up in annoyance as the doors to his clinic opened. The latest blood-work from the Reaver was less than encouraging. The krogan hunter had been ambushed, itself a remarkable event by the turian he had been pursuing. The turian who Rygon had secretly been hoping would triumph had managed to reach one of the supply caches scattered throughout the hunting grounds and armed himself with an old pistol.

The caches were Karrick's idea of 'evening the odds' for his unwilling competitors. Most of the unfortunate wretches who were captured and forced to fight were so horror-struck by the entire affair that they simply took leave of their senses and fled screaming. Those few with some kind of formal combat training managed to elude the hunters long enough to find a weapon and defend themselves. The turian not only eluded the hunters, found a supply cache and armed himself but he had also mounted a particularly effective series of ambushes on a number of hunters.

Four to be precise. Though Rygon had long since learned to ignore the constant hunts broadcast to his clinic vidscreen, he had felt himself drawn into this turian's struggle to remain alive, just a little longer. After the first kill, when the turian had dropped down from the second story fire escape of an abandoned apartment complex behind his would-be assailant and shot him, point-blank in the back of the skull, Rygon had felt a most unusual emotion course through him. After careful analysis, he realised the emotion was...hope.

Hope, that was something the salarian medic hadn't felt in some years. Leaning forward in his chair, Rygon had felt an eagerness to see what the turian would do next. He even got up from his seat and turned up the volume on the screen, which was something he thought he'd never do. Turning the vids off was impossible - the off button was disabled somehow but Rygon always kept the sound muted. It was his way of defying the batarians.

The second of the turian's victims was, absurdly, in Rygon's opinion, human. And not a slave forced to fight for the batarians either. She seemed to be there of her own free will, which surprised Rygon and he'd thought he'd seen everything these five years as a slave. The human, tall for her gender, possessed hair that had either been dyed pink or was the result of gene manipulation. She may have been considered 'pretty' by the males of her species but for the dead-eyed stare and the death's head rictus of a smile.

The huntress had been armed with quite the arsenal - twin pistols, rifle, shotgun and wore a hardsuit bearing the words _Born to Kill _stencilled across the breastplate. Born to kill she may have considered herself to be but she had come unstuck after the turian lunged out from an alleyway, and taking her completely by surprise, tore the shotgun from her grasp, pressed the muzzle under her jaw and pulled the trigger.

Never had Rygon seen a human's head explode in such a way. The scene was replayed several times - in slow motion, from multiple camera angles, in monochrome and even in thermal vision. By this point, Rygon was almost beside himself with glee. For an encore, the turian, armed with the dead woman's rifle opened fire from inside a burned out house at a pair of batarians. Rygon couldn't contain himself and pumped the air with a fist as one, then the other piece of four-eyed scum fell.

Then Rygon did something stupid. He allowed himself to hope that this turian would not only triumph over the hunters but would be able to carry the fight right back to Karrick's office and put him in the ground. That hope was extinguished when the Reaver, a krogan of massive proportions, happened upon the turian. Though he executed another ambush and even managed to injure the krogan, he was soon outmatched by the quality of the Reaver's body amour. Head down as though walking against a gale-force wind, the Reaver closed the distance to the turian, ablative plating absorbing most of the incoming fire, grabbed his target by the head and snapped his neck with brute force. For the benefit of the cameras, the krogan spread his arms wide and roared at the sky.

Rygon slumped back in his chair, hope lost. Later that day, the Reaver showed up in Rygon's clinic, his hide bearing the scars of his encounter with the turian. The ammunition loaded into one of the turian's weapons had apparently been laced with a particularly toxic compound and now the Reaver was suffering an acute form of blood poisoning. Rygon found it quite ironic that the toxic ammunition had been that used by the pink-haired huntress. That the Reaver had effectively been poisoned by a weapon used by a fellow hunter filled Rygon with grim good humour.

His humour was lessened when Karrick personally arrived to make sure that the Reaver received the best treatment possible.

Rygon hadn't needed to be told what would happen to him should the Reaver expire.

So now he sat analysing the results of the blood tests and had pretty much decided both he and the Reaver were so much dead meat when the clinic doors opened, revealing a batarian guard and a human female. Rygon sighed at this interruption. "What is it?" he snapped at the guard. The woman he ignored entirely.

"Usual drill," the batarian sounded bored, "Make sure it's fit for combat then send it along." The batarian paused to remove the human's restraints.

"Fine, fine" Rygon spat. "Get out of my clinic."

"Watch your tone, salarian."  
"Or what? You'll shoot me?" Rygon gazed steadily at the batarian, large black eyes unblinking. He didn't fear death, not any more, not after everything he'd seen in this place. His only hope was that, when his time came, it would swift and painless. Though that last was probably wishful thinking.  
"Plenty more doctors where you came from," the batarian replied and walked away. The door closed and locked as he left.

That left Rygon with the human. She stood in the doorway, rubbing the red marks on her wrists, eyeing Rygon cautiously.

"Well? Get in here, we don't have all day."

"Where'd you learn your bedside manner?" the woman shot back. Rygon rolled his eyes. This was going to be one of those days, he could tell.

---

Shepard stood before the batarian who called himself Karrick, the apparent architect of her capture and smiled. It wasn't the prettiest of smiles, her face having been subjected to a number of blows from the batarian as he worked off his frustrations on her. Her hands were still cuffed behind her back and a pair of guards held her upright. Shepard smirked as she imagined using her biotics to hurl the batarian into the wall behind him. Oh to be free of these restraints..."What's the matter, Karrick? Not _man _enough to take me on without my hands tied behind me?" Shepard knew baiting the batarian was pointless but couldn't help herself. _Besides_, she told herself as his fist looped through the air and slammed into her cheek, _pain helps you focus_.

Initially, the 'meeting' between herself and Karrick had been not amicable exactly but civil enough. Shepard had commented on the trophy heads, "Nice collection. Needs more four-eyes, though."

"Shepard, I brought you here for a reason," Karrick began.

"Yeah, I kinda figured that when I woke up on your big fancy ship and realised I wasn't dead."

"Your insolence is a poor mask for your fear, human," Karrick stepped towards her until their faces were inches apart.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," she said, smiling. "You have _no idea_. You do realise that capturing a Spectre will have major repercussions for you? Normally the Council wouldn't care much about about a half-assed gang of batarians snatching people but one of their own agents? My friend, you are, as we say back home, screwed."

"I think not, Shepard. Your vaunted Council isn't going to risk open war with the Terminus Systems over a missing Spectre. Not even for their precious Saviour of the Citadel." Karrick's face twisted with hate.

Shepard allowed a small smile, having goaded the batarian into letting some intelligence slip. The Terminus Systems, she'd suspected as much and, she had to admit, Karrick was right about the Council - they currently lacked the naval capacity to carry the fight to this lawless region of space and even if they had the fleets, they would be loath to drag the galaxy into another large conflict so soon after the geth war.

"I suppose this is the part where you unveil your grand plan to take over the galaxy? That didn't impress me when I was dealing with Saren, you may have heard of him, and I'm gonna be even _less_ impressed by whatever you're about to spew out. But please, humour me."

Karrick took his time explaining about the hunts and how his ratings were beginning to slip - at this Shepard said, "Oh my heart bleeds. I can almost hear the violins." Karrick whirled and struck her in the face. "I grow tired of your insolence, Shepard."  
Shepard's tongue emerged from between her lips, tasting the blood oozing from the corner of her mouth.

"Our peoples are perhaps more alike than you might like to admit, Shepard," Karrick said at length.

"We're _nothing alike!"_ Shepard hissed.

"A volus merchant friend of mine considers himself quite the scholar of human history. He feels that understanding a culture's past makes it easier for him to conduct business with his clients."

Shepard stared mutely over his shoulder.

"He told me about the gladiatorial combats that took place during the time of the ancient Roman Empire...on Earth, Shepard. No doubt you think us animals for pitting people against one another for entertainment-"  
"You're reading my goddamn mind, I'm amazed," she replied. The Spectre's head rocked to the left as Karrick struck her again. "I dislike being interrupted, human." Karrick went on, "Your own people, thousands of years ago used bloodsport as a form of entertainment for the masses. Man against man, man against beast. They fed people to carnivores called 'lions' did you know that? And you say our people have nothing in common."  
"We evolved past that, you sick freaks!" Shepard shouted, bloody spittle flying from her lips.

Karrick merely smiled. "I caught a recording of the most recent heavyweight boxing match beamed directly from Earth, Spectre. Would you like to see it? It is quite brutal, even by my standards. Blood was flying, Shepard. So, how far have you evolved, really?"

"Go to hell, batarian," she ground out. She was unsurprised when he hit her in the face again.

"You like that, don't you? Makes you feel like a big man, smacking women around. You told me a little story and I'd like to repay the favour. You remind me of a guy from back home. Now, I never had the pleasure of knowing him personally but I heard stories. He fancied himself as _king of the whores_, had himself a nice little harem of girls only he called them his bitches. And he certainly did like to hit his girls, excuse me, _bitches_ whenever the mood took him. Which was frequently. One day, so the story goes, the girls...sorry _bitches _decided they didn't want to be beaten up until they were bleeding and then forced right back to work so they lured him into a trap. Set him up good. You know what they did, batarian?"

Karrick said nothing but Shepard noted the tension in his arms as he clenched his fists.

"They cut off his hands. With a chainsaw. Can you fathom it? Now, as I said, I didn't see any of this personally and I only got the story from second and third hand sources but I hope it's true. I really hope it's true, Karrick. And you know why I'm telling you all this? Because if it's the absolute last thing I do, I'm going to come back here and take your hands."

With an inarticulate bellow of rage, Karrick went to work on her in earnest.

As the guards dragged the bloodied, semi-conscious woman out the door and out of sight, she called out to him in a manic, ragged voice, "His _hands_, Karrick! With a _chainsaw!_"

---

"Oh, thank you _so much_ for dumping that half-dead pile of bloody meat on my _sterile floor!_" Rygon snapped, exasperated as the guards flung their burden to the white tiled floor. The body - Rygon couldn't even tell what gender it was - thudded heavily to floor and slid forward a few inches, slick with its own blood.

"Karrick wants her patched up and ready to go within an hour," one of the guards said, as he bent over the still form and removed the cuffs, while the other covered him. The body's hands plopped bonelessly to the floor.

"Then perhaps Karrick should restrain himself from beating people half to death and expecting me to work miracles on them!"

"Just do your job, salarian. Let's go," the batarian said, motioning to his comrade.

Heaving a sigh, Rygon turned to the cabinets holding his medical supplies and removed several units of medigel.

Turning back to his patient, Rygon saw that it was a human woman, her face a veritable mask of blood. Lank black hair clung to her forehead and she breathed in short gasps. Rygon took a step towards her and she scrambled backwards, feet propelling her away from him. "Don't come near me!" she hissed at him.

"Human, I am merely wanting to help..." he began. To his surprise the woman laughed briefly then coughed, holding a hand to her side. _Ribs bruised or broken,_ he thought, beginning to catalogue her injuries.

"You want to help? Help me find a gun."

"Human, that is quite impossible. The armouries are locked down and even if you did procure a weapon, you would not live long enough to make a meaningful impact with it. Even if you could kill Karrick, what then?"  
"I think best on the fly, doctor." the woman asked, slumping back against the wall. Blood dripped from her split lip and splashed onto the collar of her uniform.

Rygon shook his head, somewhat amazed that his patient was even capable of entertaining such thoughts. Clearly though her body was damaged, her spirit wasn't. It really was a shame that she had come to this place.

Dismissing the thought, Rygon cautiously extended a hand to the woman. She looked up at him from her place on the floor then extended her own arm. Rygon pulled her upright and almost fell down as her weight collapsed on him. Awkwardly, Rygon guided the woman to an exam table covered with a white disposable sheet and she lay atop it, unable to suppress a moan.

"I'd ask what happened but I have a fairly good idea," the medic said dryly. Again the woman laughed and coughed. "I walked into a door. Thirty or forty times." Her smile didn't contain an ounce of humour. Rygon cocked his head to the side, confused.

"Old joke. Commence the poking and prodding, doctor."

Rygon began by running a hand-held medical scanner over his patient from head to toe. After a few seconds, the scanner emitted a cheerful sounding bleep, indicating that the scan was completed. Rygon consulted the initial readings. Despite the heavy bruising already beginning to form on her face and the bleeding, the human was in excellent condition. _Interesting_, Rygon thought as he continued to study the data.

"You are biotic," it wasn't a statement.

The woman sat up, the paper sheet making faint crinkling sounds as she moved. "I am."

"That will be quite a surprise to most of the hunters, I imagine."

"Oh, they won't know what hit them."

"Well you are quite a breath of fresh air when compared to the dregs of society I'm usually forced to deal with," Rygon answered, removing a penlight from his coat. "Follow the light," he instructed his patient, checking for the correct pupil responses. "Good."

"You know what I'm finding quite amusing about this entire situation?" the woman asked. Rygon gave her a quizical look. "They want to ensure that I'm in the best condition possible so I can be hunted down and killed like a rabid dog."  
"Yes, the irony around here is so plentiful, I could almost bottle and sell it. This will sting a bit," Rygon warned, and began dabbing medigel into the woman's facial injuries. She bore the iciness stoically.

As the medic worked on her, Shepard asked, "What do you know about these hunts? I need intel."  
"What? Didn't Karrick give you the...what is the phrase, chapter and verse?"  
"I think he was too busy trying to work my face into new and interesting shapes. He'll pay for that, trust me." Rygon knew by the tone of her voice that the woman wasn't making an idle threat.

"Very well, I will tell you what I know. Keep in mind that I have been...a guest of the batarians here for about five years now. I rarely leave my clinic."  
"Five years?"

"After a time, one almost forgets about the collar," the doctor stated, lifting his chin to emphasise the slave collar around his neck. A red light glowed steadily, like a malignant ruby. "The hunts, then. Karrick sees himself as a businessman and from what I can tell business has been good, until now. People from across the system actually pay to watch sentients hunt and kill one another."

"Go on," Shepard verbally prodded him, forcing her fingers to relax their grip on the table.

"The hunts are carried out in an abandoned urban sprawl. At some point in the past, a thriving colony was established here. Something happened to the colony. I do not know what. The colonists either left en masse or died somehow. Either way, the colony buildings remain and function for, as humans say, games of cat and mouse."

Shepard nodded, absorbing this fact. Urban sprawl, plenty of places to lay in wait and ambush people. Plenty of places to, hopefully, escape and evade the enemy. Then what? Find the Lieutenant, come up with a plan. Execute both it and Karrick. A smile slowly appeared on Shepard's face.

"Well, I have done all I can to treat your injuries. I regret to inform you that I must summon the guards-"  
"Wait," Shepard held up a hand, the salarian looked her expectantly. "When I was captured, I was with another officer, I don't know what happened to her. Maybe she's been through here?"  
"Perhaps. Describe her."  
"A little shorter than me, blonde hair...yellow, you know? Brown eyes."  
"Oh yes, _her._ She came through here a little over an hour ago. If she's very lucky and good, she may even still be alive."

Shoulders slumping, Shepard heaved a sigh. "What shape was she in?"  
"I'm sorry but I cannot discuss the details of her case," seeing the incredulous look on the woman's face, Rygon snapped, "I may be a slave but I'm still a doctor and I took an oath!"  
Waving a hand dismissively, his patient replied, "Fine. Was she in better shape than I am, at least?"  
"Yes," Rygon nodded. Shepard felt as though an almost physical weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The safety of her subordinates was her responsibility and ever since finding herself on the batarian ship, Shepard had been consumed with guilt over dragging the younger woman down with her.

As she moved to get up from the bench, the Spectre was gripped by a powerful hunger pang. For a moment it felt as though a hand had twisted itself through her innards and clenched into a fist.

Feeling the ache ease off, Shepard looked to the Salarian. "I don't suppose you have anything to eat in here?"  
Rygon put on a show of looking around the clinic before slapping a hand to his forehead in a very human gesture of frustration, "Oh that's right, I forgot. This is a medical clinic, _not_ an all you can eat buffet!"

"Listen to me, if I'm to have any chance at all of getting out of this alive, I need enough calories to power my biotics. At this point, I'd gladly settle for sugar stirred into water."

"Fine, fine. I may have something suitable for humans in the back. Don't touch anything." The doctor headed towards the rear of the clinic, to a door marked Storage and disappeared from Shepard's view. Immediately, she began inspecting the medical supplies, mindful of the ever-present cameras. Working quickly, Shepard liberated a small supply cabinet of medigel and, with a furtive glance at the store room door, stepped up to a trayful of surgical instruments laid out in precise order. The scalpels and scissors gleamed, bathed in light from the overhead panels. Back to the camera, Shepard slid a scalpel from the tray, concealing it inside the waistband of her briefs.

When Rygon returned carrying an armload of MREs, Shepard was back at the exam table.

"Here," the medic thrust the field rations at his patient. "Now I really must summon the guards. I'd wish you luck, human but I doubt it would amount to much."

It was only after the batarians arrived to escort the woman out that Rygon noticed one of his scalpels was missing.

__

Somebody's going to get a surprise, he thought, with a rare smile.

---

A/N: I meant to have this posted a little earlier but work, _Top Gear, Good News Week_ and _Dexter_ kinda got in the way. Don't normally write such long chapters and I hope your eyes didn't glaze over too much. As always, I appreciate feedback.


	4. Chapter Three

A/N: After a work-related delay (forty hours chained a desk, yay!) we have chapter 3. After reading sinvraal's excellent _Onus_ and _Inuctio,_ I've taken some notes and dropped in some more sci-fi-type references, mainly with regards to the hardsuit sensors picking up energy signatures from other hardsuits in the area.

Chapter Three: It Begins

_Karrick Entertainment Enterprises in Association with Batarian State Arms brings you the latest in combat games. For the first time, witness a Council Spectre on the run from the finest hunters. You know them, you fear them - the mighty krogan Bex, the wily turian enforcer Va'ath and last but not least, the Sisters of Sin known as the Twins. _

_All of this and more, only on Pay Per Slay._

---

"You see? You _see_? I _told you _that Karrick had a Spectre!"

"Well...I'll be damned."

"Hey, Kirin, you got your subscription to Pay Per Slay paid up?"  
The volus bartender drew in a gasping hiss of breath, "Of course, batarian-clan. That giant vidscreen is the only reason people like you come here."

"Well yeah, that and the nuts."

---

"So, what made you want to participate in Karrick's brand of entertainment in the first place?" asked Va'ath as he inserted a fresh block of ballistic compound into the receiver of his Armax sidearm.

"He promised me the chance to test myself against the best warriors the galaxy has to offer," Bex replied, upper lip lifting in a snarl. "He lied. Until now, all I've had to 'test' myself against are badly trained pirates and mercenaries."

"And that surprises you?" Va'ath said, mandibles twitching with suppressed mirth. "I doubt anybody with any degree of combat training would willingly volunteer to be used as live prey for the amusement of others."

The krogan merely grunted his agreement then muttered. "Oh, great. Here come the cameras for the blasted _behind the scenes footage of the hunters preparing for battle._"

A pair of automated holocameras floated into the barracks area, repulsor lifts humming quietly as they moved. _Smile for the cameras, _Bex thought sourly, aiming a murderous snarl at the nearest camera and holding the look long enough for the camera to pick up some good footage for the freaks congregating in taverns throughout the local systems.

As always, the turian pointedly ignored the camera, instead he stared off into the distance and let his hands disassemble his Sokolov shotgun. Normally, a sense of nationalistic pride prevented Va'ath from using human-manufactured weapons but the Sokolov produced by Rosenkov Materials appealed to him for the sheer ease with which it allowed him to slaughter his victims. The fact that most of his victims were also human filled with a great deal of satisfaction.

After a few moments, the camera drones floated away for more behind the scenes footage elsewhere. Va'ath rolled his eyes as he heard the asari sisters making all sorts of lewd comments, no doubt for the benefit of their legion of followers. _Tarts._

"Why did you agree to all this?" Bex asked, waving an arm to encompass the motley collection of competitors preparing for the latest hunt.

"The credits, of course."

"That's all?"

Va'ath noted the disapproval apparent in the krogan's voice. "I could find any amount of work as a mercenary, make a name for myself but I find life out here more to my liking. And besides, it's easy credits. I go out, make a show of hunting down some scum, put a bullet in his head, get paid and go to sleep."

"Don't you ever feel...I don't know, disheartened by the lack of challenge?"

Va'ath shrugged noncommittally, finished assembling the Sokolov and slot it into the hardpoint on his armour. "I have a feeling this Spectre they've captured will be enough of a challenge for us all."

"Yes, I am actually looking forward to this," Bex said, "Finally a foe worthy of my abilities."

---

The hardsuit she'd been issued was a piece of crap, Storm decided. Not 'crap' as in Aldrin Labs Onyx Mod 1 but 'crap' as in 'ablative plating almost non-existent and shield capacitors operating at forty-two percent of maximum.'

After her 'appointment' with the salarian medic and being pronounced fit to be slaughtered, Hailstorm was escorted at gunpoint to an armory of sorts. Inside, she'd been met by an unsmiling batarian seated behind a battered metal desk. Arrayed on the bare metal walls of the room were several hardsuits suitable for differing types of physiology. None of them was in what could be termed serviceable condition. _Bastards are stacking the deck in their favour,_ the Lieutenant thought.

The guard stood outside the door, waiting for the quartermaster to issue a hardsuit.

"Put this on," the quartermaster snarled at Storm, flinging a hardsuit at her with considerable force. Instead of attempting to catch it, Storm sidestepped to the left and the suit crashed to ground.

Bending to inspect the armour, Storm felt almost physically ill. The suit, a medium-weight Mercenary Mod III was in bad repair - the layers of ceramic plate heavily scarred with old bullet impacts that had been haphazardly repaired over time. The suit's chest piece bore a large crater-like depression, which Storm could very clearly see was the result of a shotgun blast delivered at close range.

"You can't seriously expect me to go out wearing this?"  
"Wear it or don't, just get out of my armory, scum," the batarian sneered.

Meeting the batarian's glare with one of her own, Hayley was suddenly keenly aware of the holocamera recording her every move. With a sudden burst of anger, she tore open the front of her uniform shirt and threw it over the camera, blinding it. Working quickly, face flushed with rage and embarrassment, the Lieutenant stripped to her underclothes and worked herself into the hardsuit.

Muttering a string of obscenities under her breath, Storm flipped open a panel on her left forearm and initiated a diagnostic. _Kinetic barriers at forty-two percent efficiency, medical interface inoperative, radio transceiver inoperative._ So she wouldn't even be able to tune the comm system to the frequency used by the _Normandy_'s shore party and contact Shepard. Brilliant.

"I suppose it's too much to ask for a gun? Or an omni-tool?"

"Guard, get her out of my armory."

---

Karrick stood before the assembled hunters he had decided to set against Shepard and her companion. He looked each in the eye as he paced slowly before them. Bex, the krogan with the misplaced sense of pride and honour, Va'ath, the wily turian former special forces operative on Palaven, and the asari sisters, one of whom blew him a kiss.

"As you have no doubt been made aware, lately my ratings and by extension profits have been dwindling. Thus I have set in motion a plan to reverse this trend. One of my capture teams has taken the _human_," his mouth twisted as he spoke the word like a curse, "Spectre, Shepard."

The hunters nodded and muttered to each other. "I realise that some of you," Karrick eyed the krogan, "have expressed concerns of late regarding the quality of those you are hunting. Fear not, for this Shepard possesses rare skill and experience...for a human As a further incentive to giving my audience a good show, I will gift the hunter who brings me Shepard's head with a bonus of one million credits. I want her head _intact_. You may do as you wish with the rest of her and her ally but _I want her head._"

Jorik waited until the last of the hunters filed out of the office before approaching Karrick with the latest subscription figures. "Pay Per Slay subscriptions are already at record levels and we haven't even began airing the preliminary hunts," he reported.

"Good. Shepard is improving our lot without even know it."

---

"O-ho, check _her _out," Karn gestured to the human woman onscreen. The main vidscreen inside the bar was currently displaying behind the scenes footage of both the hunters and their prey. The object of Karn's affection had just torn open her uniform blouse, and the holocamera operator had zoomed in for some nice shots of her cleavage when the view went black.

"Oh, that _slag!_ She just blinded the camera with her shirt! I hate it when they do that!"

Lurn shook his head, "I don't understand what you seen in human females. They're physically repulsive."  
"Says _you_," Karn shot back. "Did you see the way the strands of her hair were flying around as she moved? That was poetry in motion."  
"How can you find beauty in something that only has _two eyes?_ And that horrendous pale skin?"

"I'm just saying she was looking good with her top off, is all."

---

"Do you have any words for the viewers before the hunt begins?" a batarian armed with a microphone asked Storm. Behind him floated yet another holocamera, filming everything. She merely stared into the batarian's upper set of eyes, felt her upper lip curl in contempt.

"Very well. Just so you're aware: you will be granted one hour before the hunters are set on you. During that time, you may want to apply yourself to locating a weapon."

Hands sweating lightly inside their gloves, Hailstorm turned from the batarian and faced a set of three identical blast doors built into the surrounding grey metal wall. The doors were each marked, in standard with a number. It reminded the Lieutenant of the vids of old-Earth gameshows she'd seen as a kid. What lay behind Door Number One? A pack of slavering varren?

"As soon as you pass through one of the three doors, your time begins," the batarian said from behind her.

_Well, here we go. Roll up, roll up! Pick a number, any number! This is worse than that time I got lost in the hall of mirrors at the fair when I was seven years old. A lot worse. Ah fuck it. When in doubt, go straight up the middle._

Fists clenched tight, Hailstorm went through Door Number Two.

As the door slid shut and locked itself down behind her, the flickering holographic head-up display generated by her hardsuit computer and displayed on the inside of her helmet visor began counting down her one hour grace period. Suddenly, as though her body was only just now fully realising what was happening to her, Storm was wracked by a series of uncontrollable shakes. Chattering teeth bit down hard on the tip of her tongue and her eyes squeezed out pained tears.

Her knees unable to hold her upright, the Lieutenant slid slowly to the floor, still shaking. Two minutes had passed. After thirty more seconds, the worst of the shakes had subsided and Hailstorm got to her feet. In one corner, above the doorway, the red light of a camera stared down at her, pitilessly recording her in her moment of weakness.

With an inarticulate yell, Hailstorm disconnected the helmet of her hardsuit and swung it at the camera with as much force as she could muster. Helmet and camera met in a satisfying crunch of ceramel and metal. Storm examined the helmet, saw it was no worse for wear and reconnected it to the locking points at her throat.

The camera's lens was shattered and the red glow snuffed out. Filled with grim satisfaction, Hayley set off down the dimly lit hall. The hallway was more of what seemed to be standard batarian-style decor: dully gleaming grey metal walls with lighting panels set into the ceiling.

Hayley's eyes constantly moved around inside their sockets like well-oiled bearings, scanning for threats and anything she could use as a weapon. Fortunately there seemed to be none of the former. Unfortunately there were also none of the latter and Hailstorm doubted she could pull off using her helmet as a crude blunt instrument against a live target.

"Times like these, I wish I could kill people with my brain," she muttered, jogging along the seemingly endless corridor. A glance at her HUD told her she had just over forty-five minutes left. _Why don't I just stay here? What are they gonna do? Come down and physically drag me out? Forget it, you need to find Shepard and you can't do that stuck in here so pick up the pace, Marine._

Breaking into a jog, the Lieutenant arrived at the end of the hallway and a door identical to the one she'd entered by. A control panel glowed green in the dimly lit corridor and with a deep breath, Hailstorm laid her hand on it.

---

Shepard experienced a moment of fright in the armory. It wasn't about having to don the badly damaged Titan suit with who knew how many sets of eyes leering at her courtesy of the holocameras. It was about how to conceal the medigel injectables and scalpel she'd 'liberated' from the salarian's clinic between stripping off her bloodied uniform and getting into the hardsuit.

Then, figuring that males, no matter the species had a thing for half-naked women, she swallowed her pride and performed an impromptu striptease, drawing out the process of removing her uniform blouse and trousers. _That's right, you four-eyed bastards, drink it in. Don't pay attention to me subtly stuffing the thigh pockets of the hardsuit full of contraband, just focus on my tits and ass._

Standing upright, with the suit sealed and powered on, Shepard bowed mockingly to the camera.

"Enjoying the show so far?"

"Get...her out of my armory," the quartermaster ground out. _He sounds a little rattled, _Shepard thought with a brief smile. As she left the armory, again under the guns of the faceless guards, Shepard looked back over her shoulder and blew the batarian a kiss.

Though she wasn't aware of it, Shepard stood in the same spot occupied by the Lieutenant only an hour earlier, facing the microphone-wielding batarian interviewer. By now Shepard was learning to ignore the cameras. The half-dozen sentries posted in the area were more difficult to disregard. They all carried themselves in the manner of combat veterans and Shepard knew if she tried anything, they wouldn't hesitate to gun her down. _Bide your time, Shepard. You'll get your chance to turn the tables on them._

"Do you have any last words before the hunt begins?" Shepard flicked a glance from the microphone in the batarian's hand to his head, and then to the guards. As tempting as it was to grab the mike, smash it into the man's face and unleash her biotics, Shepard instead forced a charming smile.

Staring into the camera, carefully enuciating each word, Shepard addressed the watching audience, "There will come a day of reckoning and all of this," she spread her arms wide, "Will be cast down. As long as I have breath in my body, I won't rest until this sick circus is nought but flames and rubble."

The interviewer smirked, "There you have it folks, a dire warning of things to come. Now, contestant, you have a choice of three entries into the hunting grounds. Choose one and your one hour grace period will begin."

Shepard studied the three blast doors, identical but for the numerals on them. _When in doubt, pick C._ Without another word, the Spectre hit the control panel for the right-most door, ducking beneath it before it was halfway up.

On the far side of the door was nothing but three blank walls, with the door sealed shut behind her. Casting her eyes downward, Shepard registered the metal grating and the fetid stench at the same time. _Oh joy of joys, an entrance down into a sewer. You sure can pick 'em._

Faintly Shepard could hear water flowing sluggishly below. With a sigh she worked her fingers below the grating and heaved it out of the way. Positioned atop the ladder leading down, Shepard pondered whether she should make a slow, measured descent or just slide straight down, maybe take anything down there by surprise.

Bracing herself, Shepard took the express route down.

The Spectre landed, knees bent, in foul-smelling muck that came up to mid-calf when she straightened up. The sewer pipe's diameter was large enough that she was able to stand with her head only slightly bent as she walked forward. Loud sucking sounds heralded her every footstep as the greenish sludge clung to her legs, hindering her progress.

A glance at her HUD's sensor display gave her no sign of any hardsuit energy signatures nearby. Further up the tunnel, she heard small splashes and things skittering around in the dimness, likely the local equivalent of sewer rats. Shepard paused briefly, listening for anything larger moving around but heard nothing. Eyes scanning the tunnel ahead, Shepard unsealed the flap over her left thigh and eased out the scalpel. Thus armed, she renewed her trek through the sewage.

---

T'larn trudged through the muck and slime of the sewer pipe with a grimace. He should have remembered to replace his helmet's air filters. But he hadn't and now he didn't know what he was inhaling through his helmet faceplate. On a rational basis, he knew he was at a far higher risk of dying from a hunt gone wrong than he was from inhaling bacteria but still, he didn't get off on it.

Technically, the young batarian wasn't even supposed to be in the sewer pipe but after being dropped from the main event and relegated to participating in the opening games, he felt less accommodating of Karrick's rules.

T'larn had a one in three shot at encountering the Spectre in the pipe and, to him, that was damn good odds. If he could take out the human before she even made it to the hunting grounds proper, he could claim Karrick's prize and show up the other hunters as well.

Warily, T'larn approached a side tunnel that fed into the main channel, shotgun at the ready. He paused, hearing something small moving about. _Vermin. _Setting off again, T'larn's mind began to wonder as he thought about what he could do with all that money.

---

She was no longer alone, down here in the tunnel. Her HUD flashed up a red blip, just on the edge of the fifty-metre detection radius. After a moment's thought, Shepard shut down the kinetic barriers on her own suit, effectively blinding the enemy's sensors to her presence. It was a gamble, sacrificing what little protection she had with the hope of taking the enemy by surprise. If the hostile had a chance to shoot, the barriers would take too long to reactivate. _Why so worried, Shepard? You've been on borrowed time since Akuze and you know it. On the other hand, there are less complicated ways of committing suicide and damn you, Shepard, you owe it to Storm to get her out of this._

With an effort, Shepard hauled her mind back to the here and now. Immediately to her right was a secondary tunnel. Moving as quietly as possible, the Spectre eased up to the mouth of the tunnel and peeked around. Clear. Good. Sidling into the cross tunnel, Shepard crouched in the shadows, blade in hand, waiting.

---

Mentally, T'larn had already spent his million credit bonus - a luxury cruiser so he could sail the stars at leisure with a bevy of women catering to his every whim. Hell, his own island on a tropical world somewhere. The young batarian had forgotten a very basic lesson - always maintain situational awareness and, as fate would have it, he was about to relearn that lesson.

Ignoring the gagging stench, Shepard took several deep, calming breaths as she centred herself. She could hear the hunter - for who else would it be? - sloshing up the tunnel towards her position.

A tall hardsuited figure strode along, passing the cross-tunnel without so much as a sideways glance. Rising from her crouch, Shepard extended her right arm, tensing and relaxing the muscles in a specific sequence. Her body was suffused in the blue-purple corona of a biotic manipulating dark energy. The glow illuminated the area around Shepard and now the hunter took notice, spinning around to face her, shotgun swinging up, but too slowly. Her very being hummed with power and, channelling pent up anger aimed both at the batarians and herself, Shepard slammed the hunter into the tunnel wall. He hit hard enough to cause dirt and dust to rain down from the curved roof of the tunnel and as he fell limply forward into the sludge, Shepard saw a number of cracks radiating out from the impact point.

Warily, the Spectre moved in on the hunter, alert to any movements. He was probably dead - the impact likely enough to shatter his spine and pulp his organs but _probably_ wasn't a gamble she was willing to take. Reactivating her kinetic barriers, Shepard worked the toe of one boot beneath the limp form and flipped him so he was face up. Quickly, Shepard unsealed the helmet and tossed it aside. Oh yeah, he was dead, all right. All four eyes were rolled back in their sockets and blood trickled from the nose and ears.

Methodically, Shepard began stripping the corpse of anything usable. The shotgun was a model unfamiliar to her but she was glad of it anyway. Carefully examining it for any signs of damage, Shepard saw a sigil engraved into the weapon. _Probably the batarian version of Death Before Dishonour._ Executing a mental shrug, Shepard ejected the ammunition block and held it up to the light. _Shredder rounds. Beautiful._Shotgun reloaded and clipped to the small of her back, Shepard turned her attention the rest of the batarian's gear: a sidearm loaded with inferno rounds, an assault rifle and even a sniper rifle. _You're a regular boy scout, aren't ya?_

Smiling slightly, Shepard fitted the weapons to the hardpoints on her armour before removing the omni-tool from the batarian's left forearm. The omni-tool bathed the area with the same amber glow common to all such devices as Shepard activated it and began examining the stored data files for anything of interest. At that point, Shepard's good luck evaporated - the files were all in batarian and while Shepard could identify a few words or phrases, without some way of translating it, the information was useless. Still, if she could find the Lieutenant, Storm would be able to make effective use of the omni-tool's offensive abilities.

Before continuing on down the tunnel, Shepard examined the batarian's hardsuit. The compact powerplant feeding the kinetic barriers and sensor suite had been crippled by her assault but Shepard noticed a secondary kinetic barrier emitter that seemed undamaged. Though not trained in electronics, Shepard noted that the secondary emitter was a universal type that - theoretically at least - could be used to augment her own hardsuit. Working carefully, Shepard prised the emitter from its housing, felt around on her back for the port on her own suit and slot the emitter into place.

Nothing happened.

"Son of a _whore!_" the Commander hissed through clenched teeth before slamming her fist against her suit's rear armour plate. For a wonder, the 'percussive maintenance' seemed to do the trick as the emitter powered on, hummed briefly as the suit's power output spiked then stabilised. Her HUD readouts indicated that her barriers were operating at peak capacity.

Sparing a final glance at the batarian who had so willingly donated his gear, Shepard continued up the tunnel towards the exit.

---

The mission timer on her HUD told Storm that thirty minutes had elapsed since her grace period expired. The Marine officer pounded across the cracked urban landscape she'd found herself in after exiting the hallway. It was still night. _This world has one hell of a long day-night cycle,_ she thought randomly as she ran. Hers wasn't the mindless, panicky flat out run of prey struggling to flee a hunter. Hers was the measured run of a soldier with a destination in mind - the line of residential buildings crumbling into dust a few hundred metres up the road. If she was lucky, she'd be able to find a makeshift weapon in one of the units. Failing that, a place to hole up for a little while and plan. She snorted laughter as she neared the closest building. _Plan. For what? Your funeral?_ Slowing to a walk, Hailstorm approached the apartment unit at a crouch, keeping below the level of the windows.

The door to the apartment building was gone and from the way the door frame was twisted and warped, it appeared to have been blown open with an explosive charge. Feeling the pulse beat in her throat, Storm sidled through the doorway, taking time to allow her eyes to adjust to the dimness.

The timer in her HUD ticked down her final thirty seconds as she moved as quietly as possible through the ruins of the apartment building. The furniture, long abandoned by the planet's former inhabitants lay mostly in ruins of old timber and tubular metal framing. Keeping an eye on her sensor displays, Hayley began picking through the wreckage. Ideally she wanted a firearm, preferably something in a large calibre but beggars couldn't be choosers.

Kneeling over a hefty looking wooden table leg, a red blip flashed up on the very edges of her sensor display. "Damn it," Storm whispered. Holding the table leg in a two-handed grip as though about to swing a baseball bat, she moved deeper into the apartment.

Through the scope of his rifle, Va'ath watched the human run towards the apartment building and disappear inside. It would have been depressingly easy to stroke the trigger of the sniper rifle and put the woman down with a single shot to her heart. Instead, Va'ath decided to do things up close and personal. It would be more fun that way. Perhaps even challenging. Collapsing the rifle into its storage configuration, Va'ath began closing in on his target.

_Well, here we go Hayles. You've got yourself an admirer and he's about to make his interest in you known. Fuck, he's only twenty metres away; he's practically on top of me. Jesus! OK, OK. Breathe, breathe. I wonder if I'll ever see my nieces again..._

Va'ath stepped nimbly through the twisted front entryway, his bulk belying his graceful motions and paused to remove the combat talon from its left forearm sheathe. A glance at his HUD revealed a stationary red blip somewhere inside the building, about twenty metres from his position. He snarled in disgust - the silly bitch hadn't even deactivated her shields and the energy signature was leading him straight to her. Oh well, what could one expect from a human?

Sweat trickled from the Lieutenant's hairline and into her right eye, stinging but she didn't dare release her grip on the makeshift club to wipe her eyes. Footsteps crunched across the wrecked furniture on the other side of the wall. Hayley pressed herself up against the wall alongside the doorway leading into the bedroom where she was lying in wait. The hunter had to know she was there but probably believed that, fully armed and armoured, he had the advantage. And in a way, he did. What he didn't have was the nothing to lose, all or nothing attitude of a soldier who was likely about to die in the next few moments but determined to go out swinging for all she was worth. Hayley hoped that would be enough.

The human was right on the other side of the wall. Briefly, Va'ath considered foregoing the blade and opening up with his shotgun right through the wall then shook his head, discarding the idea. He would honour his victim in hand to hand combat. Or in this case, hand to blade. Mandibles twitching in amusement, the turian stepped through the doorway. A flash of movement from the left heralded the heavy piece of timber slamming into the side of his helmeted head. Grunting more in surprise than pain, Va'ath spun to face his attacker, the woman he'd observed earlier. She swung the wooden table leg again, hoping to connect with his head a second time but Va'ath easily ducked the swing, lunged forward and, before the woman could move to block him, slammed the combat talon into her abdomen.

For a brief instant, Hayley had the advantage. The impact of her improvised club against the turian's head sent a jolt along her arms. Her opponent wheeled around to face her and Hayley raised the club again, had time to think _I may have made a slight tactical error_ before a searing pain slammed into her stomach. Her mouth opened to cry out but no sound came, only a pained gasp. Her hands opened, releasing the leg to the floor. Storm's knees buckled and she would have fallen if not for the turian clamping one hand to her shoulder to hold her upright while the other yanked the blade out. This time she did cry out.

Va'ath sighed to himself. It was too easy. Even handicapping himself by using only a blade, he'd still managed to take down his quarry with little appreciable effort on his part. Of course, the human was still alive but, judging from the flow of blood from her hardsuit, she wouldn't be for much longer. Va'ath studied her without pity, laying on the floor, breathing in shallow, pained gasps, hands pressing uselessly against the rent in her armour, a futile attempt to stem the flow.

Va'ath sighed again. There won't even any cameras in this particular room to record the moment, that really irked him. "Human, call me a media whore if you must but you and I have a date with the cameras." Va'ath picked up the woman, slung her over his shoulder as though she were a sack of grain and headed back outside.

Barely conscious, Storm was still faintly aware of the turian slinging her over his shoulder and heading back through the apartment. _Just finish me off, you sadist._ Slung over the hunter's shoulders, her hands dangled oh-so-close to his sidearm. With gritted teeth, Hayley's right hand closed over thin air mere centimetres from the grip. Before she could try again, she was flung bodily to the hard ground, the impact sending agony through her. It felt as though she'd been run through with a steel girder. Waves of blackness washed over her and her ears were filled with a roaring sound. Desperately she fought to hold onto consciousness, fought for the will to _do something_, anything. _Oh great, now I'm hallucinating!_ Coming in behind the turian at a full run, aglow with biotic energy appeared to be Commander Shepard. _Yeah, I'm bleeding out, going into shock and hallucinating. Still, there are worse things to see before I punch out, I guess._

Hayley's eyes slid closed.

---

Oooh, a cliffhanger. I'm a right bastard, aren't I?


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four: Storm Rising

_So no longer will I lay down  
Play dead  
Play your doe in the headlights locked down and terrified  
Your deer in the headlights shot down and horrified  
When push comes to pull comes to shove  
Comes to step around this  
Self-destructing dance that never  
would've ended till I  
Rose,  
I roared aloud here  
I will  
I am_

A Perfect Circle, Rose

Va'ath stood over the limp form of the human, feeling a mix of frustration and utter boredom. Just when had things gotten so..._dull? _From the perspective of the outsider looking in, from the perspective of the fans no doubt even now screaming his name until their throats were raw, this was exciting stuff. Adrenaline pumping, pulse pounding entertainment, the tabloids wittered on. Idiots. This wasn't even a hunt, it was an exercise in repetition. Go out, lurk near the ruins the hunted always flocked towards, seeking sanctuary or just a place to curl up and die, take their lives in his taloned hands, squeeze mercilessly until nothing was left, go on to the next one.

And the next.

Va'ath sighed. Laid out before him like some sacrificial offering to an uncaring god, the woman's eyes flickered open and shut as she bled out from the wound in her stomach. The turian supposed he should quit stalling and just end her.

But he felt so _tired _all of a sudden. With a sudden burst of clarity, Va'ath understood Bex's frustration with the hunts. Bex cloaked himself in the mantle of the proud warrior, testing himself against the best this competition had to offer. Unfortunately, the best wasn't nearly good enough.  
Va'ath's mandibles flicked with irritation. _Enough already. Kill this miserable lump of flesh and-_  
But here was something different - running footsteps bearing down on him from behind. Va'ath spun around to meet this new foe head on, eyes widening in surprise as they took in the battered hardsuit aglow with the blue corona typical of biotics manifesting their abilities.  
Mandibles flaring wide in the turian version of a grin, Va'ath saw that it was Shepard. The Spectre.  
A gift. How nice.

Somewhere, way back in her mind, a little voice was telling her that what she was doing was tactically unsound. _You had the chance to quietly get the drop on him while he was distracted and blow the back of his head off._

Shepard ignored the advice. Instead, a deeper, rabidly feral part of her psyche was urging her on, telling her that an all or nothing, damn the consequences approach was the only way to survive.  
Manipulating the element zero nodes in her nervous system, Shepard shielded herself with a biotic barrier and, as she closed in on the smiling turian, executed the mnemonic that allowed her to warp the fabric of her enemy.

The hunter stiffened, head thrown back in agony as the dark energy flowed around him, rending his hardsuit's ablative layers as well as his flesh. Dropping to a crouch, Shepard detached the shotgun from her back, shouldered the weapon and fired. The blast took the turian in the upper right torso and, combined with the weakening effects of the warp field, blew a massive chunk out of his shoulder. Blue blood gouted and the turian reeled to one side, screaming wordlessly.

---

The pain was unlike anything he'd experienced before. Even during the military service required of his people, he'd never experienced such exquisite agony. For too long had he remained unchallenged, stagnant. Now, the challenge he'd been so willing to embrace only moments ago was rapidly killing him.

But not without a fight.

With a snarl, Va'ath's left hand scrabbled at the grip of his sidearm, finally bringing it into play. Blood cascaded from the crater in his torso, spattering to the ground in little rivulets. Spots danced before him and his heartbeat crashed in his ears, blotting out the world. Arm shaking, Va'ath raised the sidearm until the muzzle was aligned with Shepard.

"You're a persistent one, aren't you?" Shepard murmured as the turian began snapping off shots. The first one missed wide but the hunter quickly sighted in on her again. Two more shots were harmlessly deflected by her biotic and kinetic barriers. Shepard racked the shotgun; her barrier was about to come down, she had to end this _now_.  
The shotgun spoke again, the shredder munitions making a mess of the turian's head. The mostly decapitated corpse collapsed but not before his talon squeezed a final, convulsive time on the trigger.  
With a grunt of pain, the Spectre slapped a hand to her right thigh, removed it. The palm of her gloved hand was wet with her own blood. _Lucky that final round didn't clip the femoral artery. Medi-gel'll fix that graze right up._  
"Can't say the same for you," Shepard told the corpse. Her gaze travelled past the wreck that was the turian along the ground and came to a rest of the woman lying on her back a short distance away. "Storm?" the Commander called, breaking into a hobbling half-run. "Dammit, Lieutenant, hold on! I'm coming."  
Faintly, as though from a great distance, Hailstorm heard a voice calling her name and her eyes flickered open momentarily. The voice called her name again. Hayley felt as though she was coming home.

---

Inside Kirin's Tavern, a shocked, horrified silence had descended. Va'ath was dead. The turian they called the Enforcer was dead. Only minutes ago the crowd, numbering over a hundred had been cheering and screaming themselves hoarse as Va'ath first pursued the human into the crumbling apartments and returning minutes later with her limp form casually tossed over his shoulder. As one, every patron in the room leaned in towards the vidscreen. They knew what was coming next - the things Va'ath did to a body with that blade of his bordered on horrific. Of course, that was why they watched. Stripped of the thin veneer of civilisation, they were but blood-thirsty voyeurs.

Then, the unthinkable. The cameras panned to focus on the incoming human. Computer-generated text appeared onscreen, offering up details on the woman for the viewers.  
**Species:** Human  
**Sex:** Female  
**Age:** 32 years standard  
**Vocation:** Systems Alliance Naval Officer. Spectre  
**Special Notes:** Survivor of Akuze Incident and Saviour of the Citadel. Combat style known to be both hard-hitting and erratic. Unpredictable and dangerous. Current odds of victory: 100 to 1

Lurn turned to Karn, said confidently, "Va'aths going to tear her apart. Look at the way she's running straight at him, she's practically begging to be gutted. She..." Lurn's words trailed off as the human unleashed a biotic attack and the Enforcer's screams rang out from the speakers built into the walls like the shriek of the damned.  
Throughout the tavern, hands holding beer steins stopped moving, halfway between tabletop and mouth as people gaped unbelieving at the spectacle before them. Va'ath was...dead.  
Somewhere in the rear of the tavern, a young batarian woman began to cry softly.

---

Ignoring the burning of her leg wound, Shepard knelt beside the Lieutenant's head, assessing the damage. Storm's face was ashen and her lips a faint blue with shock. A pulse beat rapidly in her throat and even in her semi-conscious state, her hands were applying pressure on the wound in her stomach.  
Shepard snapped open the thigh pocket on her armour, removed her stocks of purloined medi-gel and leaned over the Lieutenant.

Storm sensed somebody hovering over her, just within reach. She didn't know who it was; everything was so blurry and just _wrong _at the moment. The voice had sounded like Shepard's but where was the turian? It was a trick, it had to be. Shepard wasn't here. _Couldn't_ be here. Her mind, addled from pain and shock was fucking with her.  
The form lurking over her had to be the turian, ready to finish her at last. Suddenly furious at herself, at the turian, at the whole damn galaxy, Storm's eyes opened wide and her right hand pistoned out, fingers snapping closed around the throat of her assailant. _Now squeeze._ Hailstorm's fingers tightened, her lips pulling back from clenched teeth in a snarl. She wouldn't go out quietly. Not now, not ever.

As the Lieutenant's hand shot out and locked around the collar of her hardsuit, Shepard had time to think two things. The first was _She still has some fight left in her. You go, girl._ The second was _She's strangling me!_  
Shepard locked her hand around the younger woman's right wrist, attempted to prise apart her fingers. Despite her apparent weakness, Storm wasn't about to let go. A pained gasp escaped Shepard's lips. "Damn it...I'm trying to...help.."

That voice again, so maddeningly close. It almost seemed to be coming from...with an effort, Hailstorm's eyes focused on her own arm and her gaze swept along the forearm, hand, clenched and straining up to...Shepard?  
With a jolt, Hailstorm realised that she was choking her commanding officer and close friend to death. _Oh. Damn._ Her hand opened and fell back to her side. Exhausted by her recent ordeal, Storm was powerless to stop the tears that trickled from her eyes. What she'd almost done...  
"Oh, Shepard..." she choked back a sob, "I'm sorry."

For a half-dead woman, the Lieutenant had a hell of a grip. Somewhere way back in her mind, Shepard made a mental note to ask her if she maintained any special exercise regimen. Finally, the hand at her throat relaxed, fell back and the swarm of dots that were filling her vision faded slightly.

Drawing in a welcome gasp of air that tasted sweeter than anything else at that point, Shepard took the Lieutenant's hand in hers and squeezed it encouragingly. "It's all right," she soothed with her now-raspy voice. "You mistook me for a turian, coulda happened to anybody."  
Storm smiled and laughed softly. She winced as the laughter caused a fresh wave of pain from the stab wound to wash over her.  
"How badly are you hurt?" Shepard asked, releasing Storm's hand and once again reaching for the medi-gel.  
"I took a combat talon to the gut, Ma'am. I'm pretty damn messed up, I think. Could be worse, I guess. At least I'm still feeling pain. It's bad when you can't feel it, right?" Storm's brown eyes, dull with shock held Shepard's blue eyes.  
"The hell happened to you, Commander? You look as bad as I feel."

Shepard didn't respond immediately. Instead she opened a pack of medi-gel, carefully unlocked the seals on Storm's chest-piece and laid it aside. The stab wound seemed almost too neat and small to have been responsible for the amount of blood slicking the younger woman's stomach.  
Shepard applied the contents of the packet to the injured area and immediately the medi-gel sealed off the wound, preventing further blood loss. The analgesic component of the gel began to ease the Lieutenant's pain. Storm uttered a soft sigh of relief as the pain began to abate.  
"What happened to me?" the Spectre finally answered. "Our delightful host decided he didn't like the look of my face and thought he'd rearrange it for me."  
"Commander, I'm sorry for getting us into this."  
"The hell? This isn't your fault, Lieutenant," Shepard said as she replaced the chest-piece and locked it into place. "You should start to feel better soon. Normally I'd order you to rest a few days but we don't have the luxury right now."  
Storm shook her head, refuting the Spectre's earlier statement. "It _is_ my fault. That stupid drinking contest was _my idea!_ I...fucked up, Commander."  
"Hayley, listen to me, OK? I don't blame you for what happened and you shouldn't blame yourself either. OK, maybe we shouldn't have gotten tanked the way we did but as long as we're parcelling out blame, I'm giving myself a nice big helping as well for letting us get so carried away."  
"Not the same thing," Storm insisted.  
"You're a stubborn bitch, do you know that?" Shepard smiled as she spoke. She got to her feet and helped the Lieutenant up. Storm pressed a hand to her side, wincing as she moved.  
"What do we do now?"  
"We start by stripping our friend over there of anything useful," Shepard said, jerking her head in the direction of the dead hunter. Storm walked slowly up to the corpse, whistled in admiration. "I don't think you left much of him to loot, Ma'am."

Storm carefully knelt by the turian and unhooked the talons of his left hand from the sidearm he still held. "Armax. Nice."  
"Here, you'll get more use from these than I will," Shepard said from behind her. Storm turned to see her commanding officer holding a sniper rifle and omni-tool. For the first time since this mess began - _your mess_ - Storm felt a glimmer of hope rising within her. She unfolded the rifle and spent several minutes calibrating the electronic sights. "I need to take a couple of test shots, make sure it's dialed in correctly."  
Shepard pointed out the now-familiar glow of a holocamera mounted on the roof of a building several dozen metres away.  
Storm assumed a firing stance, shouldered the rifle and took a few deep breaths before squeezing the trigger. The rifle spat a high-velocity round and the camera ceased to be. Nodding in satisfaction, the Lieutenant collapsed the weapon and slot it into her armour's rear plate.

The omni-tool was a basic Elkoss Combine model but the tech mines it produced would enable her to temporarily overheat enemy weapons, disrupt shields and counter tech and biotic talents.  
"Let's see what we have here," she said to herself, fitting the device to her left forearm and accessing the data files. "Batarian, typical. Y'know, after Torfan, I kinda immersed myself in batarian culture. Know your enemy, you know?" Without waiting for a response, she went on, "I have a basic understanding of the major batarian language but _this _seems to have been written in another dialect. I can maybe understand one word in ten. Hmmm."  
"What do you have, Storm?" Shepard prodded, her impatience growing. Hailstorm was an excellent shot with a sniper rifle or pistol and her engineering skills were almost a match to a quarian's but she tended to lose herself in her work at times and Shepard could ill afford that time to be now.  
"Looks like a layout of the hunting grounds." A holographic map hovered in the cold evening air, projected by the omni-tool. Storm pointed out a block of apartment buildings. "We're here. The spaceport's way over here," she indicated a complex of buildings on the far side of the abandoned city.  
"After they took me from their ship, I saw a large garage facility with rovers similar to the Mako. If we can get to one of those, we can make a run for the port," Shepard felt excitement building inside her as she spoke. They'd been reacting to the batarians for too long. It was time for them to start dictating how things were going to happen.

---

Karrick was well pleased. Ratings and Pay Per Slay subscriptions had hit record highs and even now, new subscribers were signing up as word of the Va'ath's death quickly flooded extranet chatrooms. The loss of the turian hunter was a minor inconvenience but it wasn't as though the galaxy wasn't full of combat veterans with a taste for mayhem. Shepard had gotten lucky, Karrick reflected. If the turian hadn't been so focused on the other human, he would have heard the Spectre coming much earlier than he had.  
"Where do you suppose Shepard found those weapons?" Karrick asked Jorik.  
"T'larn never made it back from preliminary hunts. I ordered a patrol to sweep the area and they found his corpse in the sewer tunnels Shepard passed through. The idiot must have ignored directives and thought he had a chance of taking the Spectre out before she arrived at the hunting grounds."  
"Good, I despise weakness and stupidity," Karrick said as he turned back to the live, unedited footage broadcast from the multitude of holocams throughout the hunting grounds. Despite himself, he was most curious to know what the humans would try next.

---

"So how did you get here?" the Lieutenant asked. The two officers had decided to bunker down in the apartment block for the time being, to eat the last of the rations the salarian medic had given Shepard and to give Storm a chance to recover some of her strength.  
"Well, when a man and a woman love each other _very much_..." Shepard began, handing the last MRE to her subordinate.  
Storm merely scowled at her as she tore open the foil packet and began to eat. She was ravenous and the rations tasted finer than any cuisine at that point. From their position inside the building, hidden by shadow, Shepard's keen-eyed gaze scanned the area for threats. So far she saw nothing but that provided little comfort, considering the relative ease with which she herself had ambushed not one, but two hunters. If she allowed herself to lose focus for even a moment...  
"You know that room with the three doors?" she finally went on.  
"Yeah, like something out of an old gameshow."  
Shepard nodded to herself. "So the door I chose just happened to lead down into a friggin' sewer pipe."  
"Ah. So that's what I was smelling," Storm replied, swallowing the last of her rations.  
"Yeah, you'd think a spacefaring people, even batarians could come up with a less nasally invasive way of dealing with organic waste, wouldn't you?" Shepard deadpanned. "I'm partway down this tunnel and a blip shows up on my sensors. I ducked into a short side tunnel and this batarian saunters past, not bothering to check his surroundings-"  
"I bet that cost him," Storm cut in, gripping her pistol for reassurance.  
"Oh yeah. I cut loose. They don't tell the cadets this during biotic training but it's something everybody figures out after a while."  
"What's that?"  
"Intense stress and strong emotions - say blinding rage - can strengthen the mental impulses of a biotic, give the abilities extra kick. I was so damn angry at myself, at Karrick, at the bloody _sewer _that I almost put that batarian through the wall of the pipe. I swear I could hear his spine snap."  
"Good, wish I'd been there to see it," Storm replied, feeling her own anger simmering away inside her. Then, with a smile, she intoned, "Anger will lead to the dark side, young Jedi."  
With an upward twitch of her bruised lips, Shepard replied, "Feel the Force, motherfucker."  
The two officers laughed quietly until the Lieutenant gasped sharply, hand going to her side.  
"Ohhh, if you hadn't already killed that turian, I'd love to ram his blade through his eye socket."  
"Damn, Hayles, and here's me thinking I was the homicidal one."  
"Alright, Ma'am, I think I've recovered as much as I'm going to without sleeping for thirty hours. We should probably get moving again."  
"Agreed," the Commander replied climbing to her feet and leading the way outside.

---

News of Va'ath's death was quickly passed to the other hunters currently searching for the humans. Bex accepted the news stoically. He had liked and respected the turian but, in the wake of his death, what he felt more was a growing admiration of the human Spectre who had so far killed two hunters.  
Granted, the batarian had been sloppy and had he kept his wits about him, should have been able to triumph over a single human but the turian? Even taken by surprise as he was, Va'ath would still have been a formidable opponent. For Shepard to evade death twice meant she was worthy of, if not respect, then wariness. Bex's only wish was that he would be the one to find her first. She deserved a warrior's death, not to be used as a plaything by a pair of sociopathic asari sisters, the Twins.  
Walking with the slightly lumbering gait common to his people, the krogan quickly headed to the location where the turian had died. It was doubtful that the humans were still in the area but perhaps he could find some trace of where they went.

"So sad, so sad," Miriya said in her sing-song voice, having just received word of the Enforcer's death. Her sister nodded mutely, a single tear tracking down her face.  
"Do not cry, dear sister," Miriya cooed to her, pausing to wipe away the tear with one gloved finger.  
"But I loved him so," Selene said quietly. She sighed heavily. "He could be so tender and giving of himself and now that cold hearted bitch has taken him from me."  
Miriya turned to her twin, gently cupped her face in her hands and kissed her on the forehead. "Selene, I swear on my life, we will avenge your lover. It won't bring him back but it may bring you a measure of peace." Selene stared into the depths of Miriya's eyes, blue like the skies of Thessia during the summer. She nodded.  
"We'll put that bitch on ice," Selene whispered.  
Hand in hand, the Twins began to close in on Shepard's last known position.

A/N: I've been wanting to put in that crack about the Force for the longest time and thought, why not? Admittedly, it isn't original, I saw it awhile back on this "List of things we want Samuel L. Jackson to say in the Star Wars Prequels."


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five: Battle Royale

"Can you hear me, Commander?" Storm spoke into her helmet's transmitter.  
Shepard's response was underscored by crackles of static. "Barely. This salvaged comm gear won't be much use at longer ranges."  
After their brief rest stop, Storm had disassembled the turian's hardsuit, hoping to get at the comm circuitry and effect some repairs to their suit comm units. Though damaged by Shepard's assault on the hunter, the Lieutenant had managed to patch together a serviceable unit and install it in Shepard's helmet. For herself, she accessed the minifacturing unit of her omni-tool and, with some omni-gel was able to fabricate the parts she needed to assemble some comm gear of her own. Signal strength was problematic though and Storm thought it was due more to the overall condition of their hardsuits than anything else. Still, communications broken by static would be preferable to shouting to one another the next time they found themselves under fire.  
While her officer was fitting the components together and muttering curses under her breath, Shepard took the opportunity to relieve the turian of the rest of his arsenal.

The Sokolov shotgun, modified with a scram rail and recoil dampers she eagerly claimed as her own. The turian's sniper rifle she gave to the Lieutenant who broke down the now surplus weapons taken from the batarian into omni-gel.  
"We ready to go, Ma'am?" Storm asked.  
Shepard nodded. "Bring up that map of the area and lead us to the vehicle garage. We'll jack ourselves a ride and really raise some hell."  
"They have to expect us to try something like that," Storm pointed out as they began walking away from the apartment block. She walked head down, gaze intent on her omni-tool's display. The amber glow of the holographic interface was comforting in its familiarity. Occasionally, Hailstorm's eyes flicked up, briefly scanning the immediate area but saw nothing of interest - just more rundown residential buildings, sidewalks cracked and shattered, hardy weeds growing up through rents in the road surface.  
"They will but I get the distinct impression that these guys see us as mere cannon fodder. Look at the way they have things set up: they send the 'contestants' out in banged-up armour and without weapons and I have the feeling most of the hunted aren't the most skilled opponents. Probably they drag in a lot of pirates and mercs. Us Alliance types must be a rare find."  
"So your thinking is that they'll underestimate us?" Storm sounded doubtful.  
"Look at what the turian did to you back there - if he hadn't been so obsessed with putting on a good show for the punters, he'd have just up and shot you. Which would obviously be a bad thing but do you understand where I'm going with this?"  
"He wanted to challenge himself so he came at me with only a blade. Makes sense in a twisted way but I doubt the rest will let their guard down so easily."  
Shepard merely shrugged and said nothing.

After walking in silence for some time, Shepard said, "Explain something for me, Lieutenant."  
"Ma'am?" Storm replied, looking up at the Commander.  
"How did your family end up with a name like Storm?"  
"Heh," the officer sniggered. "That goes back about five, six generations. Back in the day, the family name was Smith."  
"Oh?"  
"Yeah, plain, boring Smith. One day, old Arthur Smith who was what used to be called a 'hippy' decided to change the family name after he fell in with this bunch of tree-worshipper types. Settled on Storm to reflect nature's fury, if you can believe that."  
"Do you?"  
"About the tree-hugging thing? People do all sorts of crazy shit for no real reason, so yeah. One of my cousins fancies himself the family historian, showed me the actual documentation from when Arthur changed his name. Both of them."  
"Oh this should be good. What did he change his given name to?"  
"You ready for this?"  
"Hit me with it."  
"Thunder," the Lieutenant chuckled. "I kid you not. His wife? Changed _her_ name to...Snow."  
"Snow...Storm?" Shepard laughed quietly.  
"I know and it just kept getting passed down. I believe my parentals honestly didn't think about the obvious nickname when I was born. Well, that's the story."  
Effortlessly changing mental gears, Shepard asked, "How far are we from the vehicle garages?"  
"No more than thirty minutes," Storm pulled up, eyeing the omni-tool intently. "Contact," she said quietly. "Right on the edges of my sensor-net. Two of them, moving slow. Recommend we find a place to bunker down."

The pair of Alliance soldiers stood in the courtyard of another abandoned building, the immediate area choked with trash and the body of a junked car. There was little else in the way of cover. Shepard looked up at the building, three stories high with rusty fire escapes providing a way up.  
"Head up there, find a good sniping position," Shepard gave the Lieutenant a little push in the shoulder to get her moving.  
"What about you?"  
"I'm going to go and introduce myself to our new friends," Shepard smiled, her teeth a dull glow in the night sky.

Storm jogged towards the building, each step sending dull jabs through her abdomen and down her thighs. The medi-gel was doing a good job of numbing the worst of the pain, for which she was grateful. As she approached the bottom rung of the fire escape, she pushed herself into a sprint and leaped, grabbing the rickety structure and scrabbling upwards. The entire ladder shuddered under her weight but held. Gasping slightly from the exertion, she ascended to the flat roof of the building, eyeing her HUD the entire time. The blips were still a good distance away. The roof of the structure was bare except for the heating and cooling units of the climate control systems.  
Hayley removed the sniper rifle from the hardpoint on her back, taking comfort from the familiar hiss-whir as it unfolded into combat mode. Resting the rifle barrel on the edge of the roof, Storm laid down on her stomach and flipped up her helmet visor, bringing her right eye to the scope.  
"In position," she said into her helmet mike.  
"Copy," Shepard's came back. "I'm going to get their attention and fall back to your position. Do me a favour and try not to shoot me in the head, 'kay?"  
Wordlessly, Storm double clicked the comm in acknowledgement.

Shepard edged forward, shotgun held at the ready, kinetic barriers powered down. If it worked once...why not try again? The two blips, close together were slowly moving towards her location. She wondered how many hunters were out here. She'd taken down the batarian, though he was obviously not supposed to be in the tunnels, then there was the turian. How many more? Shepard thought back to when she'd awoken on the ship. The turian she recognised from on board. He'd been with a krogan. So was he out here as well somewhere? Possibly one of the two contacts on her HUD?  
"Focus, Shepard."  
The Spectre moved from cover to cover, pressed herself up against the crumbling wall of a half-demolished building. One of the blips had broken off and was moving away from the other, heading for Storm's location.

"Lieutenant, you have a hostile incoming." The comm clicked twice by way of reply.  
The other blip began moving at an increased rate towards Shepard's location. Shepard brought her barriers back online, tapping a finger against the shotgun barrel as the shields powered on.

Cautiously, Shepard eased her head around the corner of the building. In the near distance she saw the familiar blue-purple of a biotic corona. "An asari," she muttered. "Carries herself like a commando, oh joy." The asari strode slowly forward, unhurried, as though she knew her prey couldn't run far. Gripped in her right hand was a long, slightly curved blade, the metal a matte black to avoid reflecting any light.  
Shepard inhaled deeply, exhaled the breath slowly. She'd always been wary of other biotics. A well trained human possessed enough power to levitate something the size of a geth armature or put a human-sized target through a brick wall. An asari? Their natural biotic abilities were usually an order of magnitude higher again.  
A high pitched sing-song voice carried towards her on the cool night air, the sound of it raising the hairs of the nape of Shepard's neck. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" the huntress sang.  
Shepard glanced at the Sokolov in her gloved hands. The range was too far for it to be effective. Slotting it back into her armour, she drew the sidearm. The inferno rounds it was carrying would make short work of most anything, she hoped.

Exposing only her head and right arm around the corner, Shepard drew down on the asari and snapped off a shot. Incredibly, the biotic simply cartwheeled to the side, the round flashing downrange and igniting some trash at end of the block. Before she could pull back, the asari extended a hand in an almost languid gesture and Shepard was flung backwards and slammed heavily to the ground. Her head smacked the pavement and Shepard's sight blackened dimly.  
_Don't you dare pass out, don't you dare..._

The Spectre bit down hard on the tip of her own tongue and the flare of pain cleared her head enough. Raising her head, Shepard saw that the asari was just standing where she had been previously, watching her. Knowing it was a futile gesture, but doing it anyway, Shepard raised the gun and fired again. The round was harmlessly absorbed by a biotic barrier. The asari laughed, a light tinkling sound and stalked towards her, sword making complex patterns as it cut through the air.  
Shepard scrambled to her feet and stumbled backwards, still firing. The hunter laughed again, an incongrously joyous sound amid the swirling violence.  
Venting her mounting anger, Shepard snarled, "Come on then! You wanna dance? Bring it!"  
Left arm raised, Shepard tensed her muscles, feeling the element zero nodes throughout her body flare with dark energy, amplified by her Savant bio-amp and _lifted _the asari into the air.  
As she spun upwards, limbs flailing, the asari laughed again as though this was the most fun she'd had in years. Like she was a child on a rollercoaster.  
Shepard gripped the sidearm two-handed and snapped off shot after shot until the weapon overheated. The asari merely rolled over in midair and began to 'swim' out of the path of the bullets.  
"You cannot be serious," Shepard breathed. She'd never seen anything like it - the hunntress was using the mass-lightening field to...fly.

Through the scope, Hayley kept a watch on the courtyard before her, alert to any movements but saw nothing. She was keenly aware that the hunter could very easily enter the building from the rear exit and had left her position long enough to plant a few tech mines set on proximity triggers to cover her rear. From the distance she heard gunfire, fought down an urge to check on the Commander. Shepard could handle herself, had proven it more times than Hayley could count. It was her own welfare the Lieutenant had to be concerned with and she'd done a bang-up job of keeping herself in one piece so far. Trying to beat in a turian's head with a broken piece of table..._you silly bitch_ the voice in her head whispered.  
"Shut up. Just shut up!"  
_Bad enough you were captured by those four-eyed scum but to drag down the Commander as well? Hayley, Hayley, Hayley. What are we going to do with you?_ Her fingers tightened their grip on the rifle until her knuckles ached but she couldn't shut out that voice of self-recrimination. It was only telling the truth, after all. _You're better than this, sis. _A different voice, her brother's spoke in her mind. _Don't do this to yourself. I believe in you, even if you won't._

Even thousands of light years from home, Julian was still looking out for her. She felt a lump rise in her throat, fought back a sob.

Memories of home came flooding back - Julian teaching her how to ride a bike without the training wheels, hovering close behind her as she rolled unsteadily back and forth, to catch her if she fell. She remembered the feelings of elation the first time she rode by herself, making it all the way to the end of the driveway and back, and the look of pride in her brother's eyes. The family home had a piano, a massive Steinway and Hayley and Julian would spend hours seated beside each other, just plinking away at the keys, making up their own music.  
Oh give me the strength to go on, she silently already have the strength, little sister. It's within you and always has been.

From behind her, within the building one of her mines detonated and she was on her feet in an instant, collapsing the rifle and bringing up the pistol. Sighting along the barrel, vision blurred by tears, she moved at a crouch to the door at the top of the stairs leading into the building. The interior of the building, an old office complex of sorts, was dim and Hayley crouched in the stairwell, giving her eyes time to adjust to the reduced light. Head cocked to one side, she listened intently, hearing the last of the energy discharges from the ECM mine crackle into the air. Moving forward again, the Lieutenant's eyes swept left to right, but saw and heard nothing else.  
_How badly would it suck to find out I'm stalking a rat?  
_Pausing halfway down the flight of stairs, gun pointing into the gloom at the base of the staircase, she heard a faint shuffling footstep, a pained-sounding cough and another footstep. Whoever had set off the mine was wounded, it sounded like. Storm raised her left arm, risked diverting her attention from the stairs and tapped a series of commands into the omni-tool, priming another tech mine. Renewing her two-handed grip on the Armax, she went the rest of the way down.

Miriya had almost been fast enough to evade the worst of the tactical mine's blast. Almost but not quite. The force of the detonation hurled her across the litter-choked back office area, slamming her into a plaster wall. The impact left a concave impression in the wall and plaster dust rained on her like confetti. Worse than the physical injuries was the damping effect on her biotics. If the prey came upon her now...

Back pressed up against a wall, Hayley sidled along to the corner, crouched and peeked out. The hunter - an asari in sleek black armour liberally dusted with crushed plaster hobbled towards her, one hand pressed to her thigh. Even in the dim light, Hayley saw the blood slicking the woman's thigh. Her other hand held a long black blade, the tip of it scraping the floor. As her eyes locked with the Lieutenant's, the asari's lips peeled back in a snarl and the blade came flashing up.

Storm lurched back around the corner and the blade bit into the wall where her head had been seconds earlier. The blade struck with a solid thunk. With a frustrated grunt, the asari yanked it back out. The beginnings of a blue corona began forming, as the effects of the mine wore off.  
"Won't you come out and play?" the asari gasped.  
Backpeddling towards the stairway she'd only just come down, Storm palmed a fresh tech mine into her left hand, thumb convulsively pressing down on the detonator and tossed it down the hall.

Miriya's eyes widened as the hateful hateful little orb of death and pain flew at her. Flew closer, closer, close enough for her to reach out and

_A blinding flash of green-white light  
PAIN  
Scoring furrows through each and every nerve ending  
deafening  
blinding_

Gun trained on the asari, Storm carefully approached her, alert to any trickery but the huntress seemed to be in a very bad way. Hayley tried to feel something for the asari but nothing was coming. A part of her wondered what that said about her, that she could inflict such pain and misery on another living being and just stand there, watching. And what do you think she'd have done to you? You can't afford to go soft now, Hayley.

Hayley carefully aimed the sidearm, sighting in on the quivering asari's forehead. She could make the end quick and painless, at least.

"More than you deserve," she muttered as she squeezed the trigger.

_---_

_I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky._

Of all the things to pass through Shepard's mind, as the asari's biotics once again hurled her into the wall was a fragment of song lyric from an earlier century. Shepard coughed as she slumped to the ground, felt something wrench horribly inside her. Ribs. Broken. It was no good, she was tapped out. The waif-like asari had stopped giggling at least. Now she came in at her target at a fast walk, raising the blade overhead to deliver the coupe de grace. Shepard rolled over onto her back, felt blood trickling from her lips down her chin. She'd lost her grip on her shotgun and sidearm during their biotic duel and had only her own weakening abilities with which to defend herself.

Part of her wanted, very much, to die. A voice whispered in her mind, urging her to just let go of the pain and fear, just let go. It would be so much easier, to give in, give up than to continue fighting this losing battle. What did she have to gain, in the end, the voice whispered, cajoling her.

_You're tired, you can sleep forever if you just...let...go._

Another voice spoke up then, one she'd never expected to hear again. Kaidan. _You're better than this, Commander and I refuse to let you give up on yourself._

Shepard's eyes opened and she found the will to raise her right hand, found the strength to contract the muscle groups in sequence, firing off the element zero nodes. Her implants thrummed with dark energy and, as the blade came down, Shepard warped the asari.

Blade raised overhead, Selene considered this broken wreck of a human slumped before her. Now I take your heart, as you destroyed mine. Shepard's arm came up trembling and her form glowed with biotic power. Smiling slightly, Selene brought the blade down.

Screamed as the dark energy began tearing her apart at a molecular level, felt blood leaking from her nose and eyes, obscuring her vision. Against her will, the blade fell from spasming fingers.  
The blade clattered to the ground, hilt mere inches from Shepard's hand. Fighting the pain in her side, the Spectre hauled herself towards it, fingers scrabbling. Above her, the asari screamed and shook as the dark energies continued to tear at her. Shepard's hand finally closed around the sword hilt and slowly she climbed to her feet, bracing herself against the wall of the building. Staggering, she closed with the asari huntress, gripped her shoulder and, with a final burst of adrenal-fueled strength, slid the katana hilt-deep into the huntress' chest. The blade sliced out between her shoulder blades, blue blood trickling from the blade. Wordlessly the huntress collapsed.

Shepard followed suit.

Time passed. How much, Shepard couldn't say only that not nearly enough time had passed for the pain in her chest to fade. From a distance, she heard booted footfalls on shattered asphalt, heard a voice calling her name.

"Shepard! Shepard? Oh God."  
Shepard's eyes flickered open and the form hovering above her resolved itself into Lieutenant Storm. "You'll forgive me if I don't return your salute, Lieutenant," she said, voice hoarse with effort.

The Commander felt hands, Storm's most likely, tearing open the cargo pockets on her thigh armour, removing the medi-gel.

"Won't be much good on broken ribs," she muttered.

Without bothering to reply, Storm's gloved hands felt for the catches holding her hardsuit's cuirass together, unsnapped them. Hayley gasped as took in the extent of the bruising across Shepard's upper body. Already black-purple bruises had appeared on her skin. Her first-aid training kicked in then, her hands opening a packet of medi-gel, gently smearing it over the Commander's ribcage. Shepard winced at the coldness then relaxed a little as the numbness replaced the pain.

"Permission to speak frankly, Ma'am?" Storm asked, carefully closing the hardsuit around the other woman. Shepard nodded.  
"You look like shit. Ma'am."  
"You should see the other guy," Shepard said, attempting to rise. A hand pushed her back down, gently but firmly.  
"You're too banged up to move right now. You need to rest."  
"I can rest when I'm dead. Help me up, Lieutenant," Shepard's voice didn't waver. It held the unmistakable timbre of authority. Storm helped her up.

Shepard stood, swaying slightly, feeling light-headed. The fight with the rival biotic had almost killed her and she felt an uncomfortable sensation, like ants crawling over the back of her skull and down her neck, radiating out from where the bio-amp sat snug in its socket. How close had she come to completely frying it? Shepard raised her right hand. It shook slightly, muscles twitching and jerking beneath her skin. Closing the hand into a fist, the Spectre quelled the shakes. Opening the hand again, she generated a weak mass effect field, bracing herself for a lightning bolt of pain to rip her head asunder. Blessedly, it didn't come. The crawling feeling intensified slightly but that was all. She'd gotten lucky. Lucky. The thought amused her and she laughed.  
"Ma'am?" Storm asked.

"I was just thinking how lucky I was not to be in a coma or something right now."

Shepard scanned the surrounding area and located her weapons. The asari, aside from the blade now lodged inside her had also carried a sidearm. Shepard relieved her of it, slotting it into the hardpoint at her right hip.  
"You got the other one?" Shepard finally thought to request a sitrep.

"Yes, Ma'am," Storm answered crisply. Holding onto established regs and protocols helped keep her from focusing on how deeply in the sewer they were.

"Then it's time to finish this."

_A/N: I probably over-stated the effects of the tech mines in this chapter but I figured that anything that could shut down tech and biotic talents and stun a target into the bargain would probably have some kind of painful effect on the target so I went with it. Also, Fade to Black will likely be the last story I write with this incarnation of Shepard. I'm currently working on a follow up to the Valentine's Day special and I promise, it'll be a lot more light hearted than this._


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six: The Tables are Turned

Rygon hadn't thought much of the human's chances when she'd appeared in his clinic, beaten and bloody but she was proving herself to be quite difficult to kill. Despite himself, Rygon sat on the edge of his seat, riveted by the action onscreen. More and more often he found himself shaking a fist and muttering, "Come on, come on!" as the woman, Shepard no less, battled her way across the urban wastes.

Rygon experienced what could have been termed a 'heart-stopping moment' when Shepard encountered one half of the Twins. Those huntresses had always made Rygon intensely uneasy, carrying themselves as they did with a confidence born from knowing they could take apart any opponent at any time. Then there was the way they would look at him sometimes, as though questioning whether it would be worth the effort necessary to kill him.

As Shepard lay slumped on the ground, surely having endured more than any being could take, the medic turned away from the screen, unwilling to bear witness to her death. Head held in his hands, Rygon jerked as the high-pitched shrieks of the asari assaulted his sensitive ears. Rygon spun his chair around just in time to witness the Spectre running the huntress through with her own blade.

Even as Shepard slumped to the ground, utterly spent, Rygon surged out of his seat, and actually jumped for joy.

Once again, hope began to kindle in his heart. Eyes shining, the medic held fast to the feeling as hard as he could.

---

"She must be put down," Karrick muttered. He was feeling a grudging respect for the humans, Shepard in particular. For her to kill a former asari commando so soon after defeating the turian was impressive. Less impressive was the seeming inability of the hunters to put down a pair of ill-equipped and increasingly injured humans. Females, at that.

"Where is Bex?" Karrick snarled to nobody in particular. Since entering the hunting grounds, the krogan had made himself scarce, seemingly content to observe the action rather than take part in it.

Karrick turned away from the vidscreens and looked over at the space he'd cleared on his trophy wall. The space reserved for Shepard's head.

"Inform the krogan that if he doesn't make an effort to bring the humans to ground, we'll be coming for him."  
Jorik departed the office without a word.

---

Shepard sat with her back against a crumbling red-brick wall, recovering some of her strength after the battle with the asari. The Spectre drank from a bottle of electrolyte fluid carried on the asari's belt. Used by biotics in the field, the drink was designed to allow faster recovery after heavy combat.

As the Spectre drank, she studied the slightly curved blade that had so very recently been at home in the asari's chest. Storm looked on wordlessly as Shepard planted a boot on the body, holding it down as she drew the blade back out. The metal squeaked slightly as it came free, as though reluctant to part with its owner. Shepard wiped it against her thigh armour, leaving a bluish smear.

"What are you planning to do with that, Ma'am?" Storm finally asked. She risked a look at her commander's eyes - they seemed infinitely cold and calculating. The flat quality of her gaze, combined with the scar running down her left cheek, a souvenir from Earth, lent the Commander a suddenly sinister look.

Hayley suppressed a shudder and looked away, finding something of immense interest in her omni-tool instead.

"Right at the start of all this, I had a little 'chat' with Karrick."  
Shepard sat, drank from the bottle, studied the blade. Storm waited for her to resume speaking. "Before I parted his oh so charming company, I made him a promise, Lieutenant."

Again, Shepard fell silent, contemplating the weapon. The blade had likely been mass-produced in some factory, a soulless reproduction of a weapon that, in ages long past, had been forged in the fires of war. A true warrior's weapon.

"I promised that I was going to come back for him. And take his hands." Shepard looked up at the other woman, looked at her with those eyes and Hayley felt a thread of true terror worm through her. The Commander wasn't making an idle threat, possibly for the benefit of any holocameras monitoring them. And she wasn't even telling herself that to psych herself up for one final push.

She meant it. She really meant it. The simple, flat way in which Shepard delivered her words chilled Storm more than anything she'd encountered thus far had.

Shepard looked up at the Lieutenant from where she sat against the wall. Swallowing the dregs of the electrolyte replacement drink, Shepard tossed the bottle aside. "I'm scaring you, aren't I?" she asked, voice softening.

"A little, yes," Storm admitted. Her gazed flicked from Shepard's blue eyes, now seeming lighter than before, back to her omni-tool display. The scans were clean. If she didn't know any better, she could almost believe they were alone out here.

"Understand one thing, Lieutenant. We didn't start this," she waved a hand to encompass the area and Storm nodded. "But we're going to finish it. One way or another. Do I make myself clear?"  
Storm's posture straightened and she nodded. "Crystal."

Blade in hand, Shepard climbed to her feet, wincing at the aches that had settled in her joints and muscles. The crawling sensation emanating from her bio-amp port had mostly abated but she was loath to use her abilities again unless it became absolutely necessary. Reports of human biotics overusing their abilities to the point of death or permanent disablement were relatively few but there were relatively few human biotics and Shepard had no wish to drop dead from a brain aneurysm. Not when they were so close to their objective.

As they continued towards the garage complex, Shepard's mind began working on ways to best handle things. A head on assault was out of the question. The two of them simply lacked the firepower necessary to breach the enemy defenses. A better plan would be to employ Storm and her sniper skills. Drop the guards at the perimeter. Maybe find a way to cause a diversion of some sort. Spark an explosion with a fuel tank and a shot from her inferno loaded sidearm, perhaps.

---

Bex was in a quandary. The krogan had long desired a target against which he could truly test himself and now here was Shepard, his for the taking. But, as he observed the pair of humans, Shepard covering the other's advance, blade and sidearm in hand, he felt a curious desire - not the desire to meet them in battle but a desire to fight alongside them against their true enemy - Karrick. The batarian wanted Shepard dead and all for the sake of his petty personal agendas but he wasn't willing to leave the safety of his office suite to bring her down himself. Bex's lip curled in a snarl of contempt.

The words of Karrick's lackey rang in his ears, even after they'd spoken, "Bring in her head or we'll come for you."

Bex had grunted noncommittally and clicked off. He wanted Shepard, yes. But not now and not like this. He wanted to face her on a true battlefield, not this contrivance dreamed up as a source of perverse amusement. He wanted to face Shepard at the peak of her abilities, fully armed and armoured.

He wanted to know that he was capable of killing her without her being handicapped in any way as she was now.

"So you will just let her walk away?" he muttered to himself. _Karrick will be most displeased. _"Karrick can blow me," he answered himself. There would be no honour in this, slaughtering them both like animals.

Watching Shepard and her companion from his position in an alleyway choked with stinking refuse and the mouldering bones of past competitors, Bex got Jorik on the comm.  
"Have you made a decision, krogan?"

"I have," Bex rumbled, turning away from the humans. "Tell Karrick that if he wants Shepard's head so badly, he can come down and take it himself. Shepard is a warrior and deserves better than to be hunted down like a rabid varren."

"You cannot-" Jorik sputtered before Bex severed the connection.

---

"I was always willing to tolerate Bex and his misplaced sense of honour, until now," Karrick stood hands clasped behind his back as Jorik delivered the news. His four-eyed gaze stared unblinkingly at the krogan's immense form as he was tracked by holocameras

"Assemble a commando team. They are to bring the krogan in alive if at all possible. He will serve as an example of what happens to those who defy me. Plus think of the ratings if we play it right - hunter turned hunted. The great krogan warrior humbled and brought low. The fools will lap it up."  
"What of the humans?" Jorik asked after passing along the orders.

"I've been monitoring their communications through the camera network. They want to mount an offensive and escape. Let them come."  
"Shall I alert the security detail?"

Karrick laughed, a short barking sound, "No. I believe the time has come to, as humans say 'shake things up.' Those who survive the humans' attempt to escape are to be promoted those that don't shall still serve as examples of how not to perform their duties."

Jorik nodded dutifully, keeping his own opinions to himself. In his view, Karrick was being far too blase about the humans, Shepard especially. For them to have come so far given the limitations placed on them was telling. And now Karrick was going to allow the humans to mount an assault on an unprepared position. Jorik closed his eyes. Between Bex's apparent defection and the humans' refusal to lie down and die, Jorik felt things were beginning to slip from Karrick's grasp. That the other batarian seemed not to care worried Jorik even more. But Karrick was in charge and Jorik would do as he was ordered. He just hoped it would be enough.

---

Seen through the rifle's scope, the two batarians on guard duty may well have been characters in some holo-drama - standing nonchalantly by a side entrance to the garage building, talking and joking with one another. Completely oblivious to the mass accelerated rounds about to give them the mother of all headaches.

Storm's right index finger tightened down on the trigger and the left-most guard fell back, the wall behind him painted with the contents of his skull. Before his friend could do more than gape in shock, the marine was working the bolt-action and firing again. The second batarian fell, collapsing like an unstrung puppet.

"Clear," Storm whispered into her comm. Even as Shepard responded, a thought bubbled up in the Lieutenant's mind _This is too easy._

"Copy that. Hold position."

Hayley kept watching the area around the vehicle garage through her scope. They had chosen to attack at this secondary entrance because it was far enough away from the activity at the main entrance where batarians and slaves worked at loading and unloading vehicles or performing maintenance. Slaves. That was another wrinkle, the Lieutenant thought. The mental conditioning, 'brainwashing' they'd been put through at the hands of their captors likely meant they'd fight and die to stop any threats to their masters. Worse, the batarians would probably use their slaves as meatshields, hoping that the humans wouldn't attack through them.

Storm swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry at the thought. Could she do it? Gun down an unarmed person if it meant saving her own life? She wasn't naive enough to think she wouldn't be faced with the choice. Could she gun down an unarmed person to save _Shepard?_ Yes, in a heartbeat. And she knew Shepard wouldn't hesitate to kill an innocent if it meant saving her either.

"The deaths of innocents to save your own skin. They didn't mention _this_ in basic," she muttered to herself.

"I don't like it either," Shepard said quietly as she joined the Lieutenant. "If we can find a way to subdue them without killing them, fine. If not...it'll be another crime that Karrick's guilty of."

Pulling away from the rifle scope, Storm met Shepard's eyes and nodded.

Shepard placed a reassuring hand on the other woman's shoulder and gave a brief squeeze. They were both on the edge of falling apart, mentally if not physically and Shepard hoped the simple contact, even through their hardsuits would reinforce the face that they weren't completely alone out here.

"Just this last hurdle, Hayley," Shepard said. _You liar. You could leave things at simply stealing a rover, and infiltrating a ship but no, you have to have your moment with Karrick. And killing him will solve what, exactly? The batarians aren't going to have an epiphany and decide slaving is immoral and stop doing it._

As though reading her thoughts, the younger woman replied, "No. You and Karrick have a little dance before we're ready to leave."

Shepard nodded, unwilling to face her eyes, "I must look like some macho hero in a holovid. Going one on one with the head bad guy before the end credits roll. But it's more than that," she continued as they made their way towards the garage.

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Commander," Storm cut in. She collapsed the rifle, slotting it into the hardpoint on her armour and taking up her pistol.

"I'm not sure I can even explain this to myself," Shepard muttered as they came upon the heavy metal door. The access panel set into the wall to the right glowed red.

"Locked," Shepard said dryly, "What a surprise."

Stepping over the bodies of the guards, whose faces stamped with identical expressions of surprise, Storm inspected the lock.

"Standard cryptolock. Thank God for standardisation and corporations monopolising things. Makes my job _so_ much easier."

Shepard smiled to herself at the Lieutenant's stream of consciousness whilst keeping watch for any threats. A cheerful sounding _bleep_ emanated from the lock and the door slid upwards.

Storm stepped away from the door, pistol at the ready, glancing at her HUD. "Scans are clean."

Shepard nodded and the two officers entered the garage facility.

---

"What the _hell _is going on out there?" Karn muttered, watching the tavern's holoscreen. After that stunning bit of girl-on-girl action between Shepard and the asari, during which the entire population of the bar was convinced that the human was meat, there had been a grand total of...nothing.

Well not nothing. First there was footage of the _other_ human happening upon Shepard's damnably live form and administering first aid followed by some oh so _riveting_ footage of Shepard sitting on her can having a drink and talking!

Oh sure, she made some proclamation about cutting off Karrick's hands with the katana she'd used to such great effect on the asari but everybody knew that was just idle talk meant to psych herself up. Then the two women getting up and walking towards a garage facility located just off the hunting grounds, with the apparent aim of stealing a vehicle, hitting the spaceport and hijacking a ship!

"This is beginning to feel like a badly plotted holodrama," Karn went on, holding up his beer stein for a refill. As the rotund volus bartender took the stein and turned to the beer taps, Lurn spoke up.

"Where's Bex? That's what _I _want to know. It's like he just decided to take the night off and do whatever krogan do when they aren't killing people."

As Kirin placed the now-full beer stein on the bar top, he gasped in a breath, "Perhaps he is biding his time and waiting for the humans to drop their guard."

"That better be what he's planning," Karn said as he took another drink.

"Oh look! Now she's cracking a lock on a door!" Lurn said disgustedly.

---

The two Alliance officers crouched low in the shadows inside the cavernous vehicle garage. The ceiling mounted lights illuminated only the vehicles being worked on as well as the work benches and storage lockers, providing plenty of hiding spots deeper inside the building. The audio pickups inside their hardsuit helmets fed the soldiers sounds typical of a repair facility - pneumatic tools and air compressors, metallic clanks and the snap of arc-welders.

Storm checked her omni-tool's sensor readouts. "I'm picking up a pair of hardsuit energy signatures at the main entrance. Stationary."

"Alright, follow my lead. We take down any armed hostiles. If any slaves get in the way, subdue them however you can. I have enough blood on my hands." Shepard fell silent, remembering Virmire.

Storm primed a tech mine. "A damping field will have them writhing around in agony long enough for us to escape but won't do any permanent damage. I just hope the batarians don't kill the slaves in retaliation for us doing this."

Moving from the shadows, the two women used heavy metal crates and parked vehicles as cover, edging closer to the front of the building. As they moved up behind one of the black-painted prison-vans, a metallic sound rang out as something large and heavy fell to the cracked permacrete floor. The sound was immediately followed by a harsh batarian voice, "Worthless human scum! That equipment is worth more than your hide! Be more careful!" The batarian gave a grunt of effort and the slave cried out. Shepard grit her teeth at the unmistakable sound of a neural lash.

Something inside her, some fraying piece of her self-control, broke and she was across the space separating them from the slavers in seconds.

"Dammit!" Storm hissed, moving to support her CO.

Ilkterr stood over the cowering human, breath wheezing in and out of his throat as he flailed away with the lash. The sound of running footsteps distracted him and he turned, eyes widening in shock.

The human slammed into him bodily, forcing him to the floor. Before he could even move to resist, his head was bouncing off the permacrete, stained with engine oil and coolant. Once, and he grunted in pain, twice and his sight wavered, three times and he knew nothing more.

Shepard pushed herself to her feet, hand going to her shotgun as the guards at the front arrived to see what the commotion was. Before her, the slave scrambled backwards away from her, eyes wide with fear. The batarian lay motionless between them, eyes rolled back.

"She killed the master!" the slave repeated over and over, voice flat and declamatory. He pointed to Shepard as the guards arrived.

"Move aside!" a guard snapped and the slave ran outside.

From behind Shepard, a shot rang out and the closer of the two guards fell back, hands going to his throat as blackish blood spurted. Shepard levelled the shotgun and fired, the sound echoing off the metal walls. A ragged hole the size of a serving platter appeared in the slaver's torso and he too collapsed, a small lake of blood rapidly spreading from the corpse.

The vehicle the slave had been working on was a six-wheeled rover similar to the Alliance M35. Linking her omni-tool into the rover's onboard systems, Storm ran a diagnostic check. "They must have just finished up on this one, everything's fine."

"Good. I'm getting tired of running everywhere," Shepard commented, pulling herself into the driver's seat. The controls and readouts were annotated with batarian characters but the basic layout was similar to what she'd seen before and she had little trouble pressing the appropriate buttons to turn over the engine.

Storm slid into the passenger seat, transferring fire control for the roof mounted turret to her position.

Beneath them, the fusion engine rumbled to life and the kinetic barriers hummed as they began charging.

"Where to now? The spaceport?" Storm asked, hoping Shepard could somehow get past her need for vengeance. Her hopes were dashed when Shepard shook her head.

"Bring up that map of the hunting grounds," she ordered. Wordlessly, the Lieutenant accessed the data files stored in the omni-tool, tightbeaming them to the rover's nav system.

"That's the main complex. Karrick's office," Storm pointed at the building then to another, "This looks like the production offices where they package up the footage and broadcast it. We take out their transmitters..."

Shepard smiled, "Game over."

---

"Oh what _now?_" Lurn cried as the vidscreen went suddenly blank. A message appeared in the centre of the screen, Pay Per Slay Temporarily Interrupted. Normal Service will Resume Shortly

---

The rover met no resistance on the way from the garage to the transmission tower, a tall structure jutting up into the darkened sky like an accusatory finger. "You want to do the honours?" Shepard turned to face the Lieutenant as she brought the rover to a halt.

"Hell yeah," Hayley replied, gripping the controls for the main gun. Servomotors whined, bringing the anti-vehicle armament around to lock onto the tower. "Maybe I'm tempting fate here but the lack of any resistance is beginning to freak me out."  
"Nobody expected a mere _human_ to be able to accomplish anything like this. We've gone a long way off the script - we fought when we were supposed to cower, we stood firm when we were supposed to falter we...you know what? Just fire the damn cannon."  
"Ma'am," Storm replied, hitting the triggers. The cannon boomed and the vehicle shuddered. The transmission tower's base crumpled then it collapsed under its own weight, the sounds of metal screaming and rending carrying into the vehicle's cockpit.

---

"What has she done?" Karrick stared aghast at the bank of monitors. Every one was blank.

"They must have destroyed the transmitters," Jorik surmised.

"Alert the guards, they'll be coming here next and lock down the spaceport. They must not be allowed to reach this office!"

As Jorik left to oversee the defenses, Karrick began arming himself for the inevitable confrontation with Shepard. He was a businessman, an entrepreneur. He wasn't cut out for this. He had hordes of soldiers ready to die by his command so he wouldn't have to but he knew it wouldn't be enough and with Bex roaming out there somewhere, his worries were doubled. Karrick snarled to himself. Things were coming unravelled and he was forced to admit to himself that he didn't know how to rein things in.

---

A shot rang off the hull of the rover as Shepard and Storm hunkered down behind it. A squad of batarians wearing their trademark black armour was advancing on their position. In the distance stood the building complex the batarians had herded them towards when they'd first arrived. The destruction of the tower seemed to have lit a fire under Karrick; batarians were bearing down on them in increasing numbers. Again a round spanged off the hull. The small arms carried little risk of breaching the armour but it was only a matter of time before the vehicle was flanked.

"Storm, disable their weapons," Shepard ordered. Without replying, the junior officer flung a primed EMP mine into the batarians' midst.

Both women rolled out from behind cover, weapons blazing and within seconds the enemy squad was down. Shepard shot a glance at another group of soldiers heading towards them, "We can't take them all out on foot, fall back to the rover!" Snapping off shots from her pistol, Shepard covered the younger officer's retreat.

Storm reached the cockpit of the vehicle, paused to look back and gasped as Shepard staggered, injured. "Shepard!"

"Get in the damn tank!" she bit back, holding her side. Shepard stumbled back, firing one handed. Blood flowed from a gunshot wound in her side, the mass accelerator round exploiting a weak point between two ceramel plates. _I will not go down like this, not when I've come so far!_

Storm grabbed Shepard and pulled her to safety. Shepard groaned as she hauled herself into the seat. More gunfire rang off the hull.

Breath rasping in and out of her lungs, Shepard put the vehicle in gear and aimed it right at the advancing troops. Bracing herself for impact, she floored the pedal. Batarians threw themselves aside as the vehicle roared by, wheels crushing the already-dead soldiers.

"Lieutenant," Shepard ground out, fighting back the pain as she was tossed around in her restraints, "Put a round through the main doors up ahead."  
By way of reply, Storm triggered the main gun and the doors leading into the main building exploded in a hail of metal fragments.

For good measure, Storm aimed the anti-personnel minigun down the hallway and triggered a long burst. The gun fired with an amplified _tat-tat-tat_, the rounds chewing up walls, floors and ceiling. Through the battered cockpit windows, Hayley saw several splashes of gore as hapless batarians were caught inside the building, unable to escape the cannon fire.

Shepard brought the vehicle to a stop just outside the shattered entryway.  
Storm turned to look at her, slumped in her seat with only the five-point harness keeping her from sliding out of her seat. "Ma'am?" she began, fearing the worst. The rumble of the rover's engine filled the silence.

Shepard's head rose in fits and starts, pain clearly etched on her features. She swallowed and slowly began unbuckling the restraints. Her fingers, slick with own blood, slid off the buckles. Head falling backwards, she glanced over at the Lieutenant. "I'm not going to make it, Hayles," she muttered. Shepard felt so tired and weak. The wound in her side, combined with the beatings and her overusing her biotics had sapped her strength. She could almost hear the voices of her old squad-mates, the ones lost on Akuze, calling out to her. _Come home, LT, come home._ And oh, she so wanted to go home. Thoughts of petty vengeance slipped from her mind as she fell closer and closer to unconsciousness.

Her eyes snapped painfully open as the Lieutenant jammed the pointy end of a medi-gel injectable, their last one, through the bullet hole and directly into the wound. The cry of pain changed into a moan of relief as the anaesthetic compound took hold, sending a wave of drug-induced bliss through her being.  
"Open your eyes, Alison," Storm said quietly. She rarely addressed superiors by their given names, it felt almost like a breach of protocol and, most times, protocol simplified things. A superior entered the room, she came to attention and saluted. A superior officer gives her an order, she says "Aye sir," or "Aye ma'am." She most certainly does _not _stab her superior officer in her bullet wound in order to inject medi-gel and stave off death for just a little while longer.

"Ally?" Oh great, start using a pet name she probably hasn't heard since she was ten, brilliant job, Hayley, "You still with me?"

Shepard nodded and with renewed vigour, unbuckled her harness. "Who taught you battlefield first aid, Lieutenant? Jack the Ripper?"

"No, his father," Storm quipped, glad that the Commander hadn't called her on the first name thing.

Shepard inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly and looked down at herself. Though the bleeding had stopped, the portion of her hardsuit covering her lower abdomen was almost soaked.

Shepard closed her eyes again, breathed deeply through her nostrils. Finally, she levered herself out of the cockpit, brought up the shotgun and, without looking back, entered the building.

Storm slid from her seat, pistol at the ready and followed her.

Picking their way past the shattered remains of the door and the wreckage wrought by the minigun, the Alliance officers headed down the hallway, lights flickering with a strobe-like effect. "Where's the elevator to Karrick's office?" Shepard inquired.

"Just up ahead, the hallway opens out into a kind of lobby with banks of elevators. I'm reading multiple hardsuit emissions though."  
"How many?"

"At least fifteen."

Shepard smirked, "The more the merrier." Shepard breathed deeply again, smelling the spilled blood of the batarians torn up by the minigun and raised a biotic barrier, the blue-white corona illuminating the hallway as they neared the elevators. The crawling feeling at the base of her skull cranked up a notch. "Not now," she pleaded with herself, "Please not now."

For her part, Storm primed a pair of tech mines designed to overheat weapons and held them both loosely in her left hand. _Just toss and fire. Don't think, don't over analyse just toss and fire._

Storm and Shepard, Hayley and Alison entered the lobby. Storm tossed and fired.

"Incoming! Find cover," a batarian shouted, diving behind a desk. Shepard turned and fired, the shotgun booming loudly in the closed space and the batarian fell back, face erased. She pumped and fired again, then twice more. The weapon emitting a frantic-sounding beep as it overheated. Dropping it, Shepard drew her sidearm, shots rattling off in quick succession. More batarians fell. Beside her, Storm's omni-tool flared amber in the dimly lit room, and a batarian's shields failed. Hayley shot him pointblank. Then twice more for good measure.

Shepard strode forward, firing the pistol until it too overheated. Without breaking stride, she tossed the gun aside, slapped her hand to the sidearm taken from the asari and kept firing. Movement from the corner of her eye caused her to turn; a batarian wielding a shotgun rose from behind a desk and, without thinking, Shepard hurled him back with a biotic throw. "Ahhh," she moaned. A sharp pain flared up behind her eyes before settling into a dull ache.

"Shepard?"  
"I'm good," she dismissed the other woman's concerns. _How far away from permanent brain damage am I? One more throw? Two? A warp, perhaps?_

"I think that's all of them," Storm said. She stood in the centre of the bullet-riddled room. The walls had been peppered with stray rounds and most of the lighting panels were shattered, casting the room into darkness. Only the glow from her omni-tool gave Storm enough light to see by.

Shepard palmed the control to the elevator. It obstinately refused to open.

Wordlessly, the Spectre pointed to the control panel, standing aside so the Lieutenant could over-ride the lockdown.

Jorik lay on the floor of the lobby, his blood soaking into the plush carpeting. Shepard had been utterly relentless and fifteen of the finest batarian commandos on-planet had been shot dead in mere moments. Blood bubbled out from the chest wound she'd inflicted on him and each intake of breath was like a flaming blade thrust in and out of his body. His right hand loosely grasped his sidearm. He didn't have much time left, he realised. Minutes at most. He ran through the sequence of actions in his fevered mind: raise the arm holding the gun from the floor, swing it up to aim at the back of Shepard's head, squeeze his index finger down on the trigger.

Jorik's hand trembled at the end of his arm and with a titanic effort, the gun rose up, not in the smooth motion he'd envisioned only seconds earlier but in jerks and spasms. After what felt like an age during which empires rose and fell, the sidearm was pointing at the hateful woman's head as she attempted to open the elevator doors. Jorik smiled to himself, he'd locked the elevator down himself and now it was going to help him kill the bitch. Shepard stood aside and her subordinate stepped up, omni-tool illuminating the area around her. After Shepard was dead, he'd kill her too.

Then, the cold sleep of the grave.

As she worked on decrypting the control panel, long dormant instincts came to life and Storm felt the fine hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end. Abandoning the door, she spun around, gun sweeping up and saw, lying amidst the corpses and wreckage, a single badly wounded batarian shakily aiming a gun at Shepard. Shepard, who was slumped against the wall, clutching her side. Hayley hoped she was just asleep and hadn't died in the last thirty seconds.

The batarian's four eyes narrowed and his finger squeezed the trigger.

"No!" Hayley cried, slamming herself into the Commander, throwing her out of the line of fire. _This is how you go out, taking a bullet for your CO._

Her kinetic barriers flared blue as they absorbed the hit, and a second round slammed into the wall, leaving a fist-sized crater. Hayley and Shepard fell to the floor, the latter grunting in pain and the former stumbling to her feet. _I just dodged a bullet _was the first coherent thought to break through the clamour in her mind. The batarian, arm shaking violently, attempted to line up a third shot.

"Shepard?" Storm called. "You OK back there?"

"Fine and dandy," the Spectre replied.

Storm nodded to herself, strode across the bloodied floor to the batarian and put a round through his head.

It was all over, Jorik thought. Despite his best efforts, the humans still lived. The blonde-haired one said something to Shepard, received a reply and began walking towards him until she loomed tall over him like some mythical titan. His lips moved as he tried to speak but no sound came out, only the hissing of air from his punctured lung. Jorik's eyes closed as he made his peace with the galaxy. He never heard that final gunshot.

Hayley stood over the body, hands clutching the pistol in a white-knuckled grip. She felt her heart pounding too hard, felt herself start to shake as the adrenaline rush faded. How many brushes with death could one person withstand before something inside them broke and they became irretrievably unhinged? _That's something you should ask the Commander. She's been almost killed more times than anybody I know and she's still mostly sane._

"Lieutenant?" Shepard's voice came from behind her. "Thanks...for pushing me out of the way. I must've zoned out for a little while there. I should have had your back and I didn't."

Storm turned back to the other woman, again standing at the elevator doors. "You rode to my rescue when that turian bastard was about to fillet me, so I'm glad to return the favour."

This time, when she attempted to unlock the elevator, nobody tried to stop her.

---

Karrick paced back and forth in his office, past the walls of heads and weapons on display, always keeping his head turned towards the security camera feeds. The batarian warriors led by Jorik were gone. Jorik, with whom Karrick had entrusted so much, was gone. Bex was somewhere out there, likely massacring his way through Karrick's remaining people. And now Shepard was coming for him. Karrick watched her progress on the monitors as she headed down the hallway towards his office door. She paused just outside the door, said something to her companion who nodded. Onscreen, Shepard drew a longsword from where it had been carried amid her hardsuit's webbing and opened the door.

---

"Alright. We're here," Shepard said quietly. Storm nodded, they were back outside the same door they'd seen separately before. Only this time there weren't any batarians around to club her in the stomach for which Storm was grateful. Shepard turned to her subordinate, that same dark look in her eyes. "I want you to stay here and keep watch."

"Ma'am," Hayley nodded, unable to look away from those eyes. What she saw in their depths promised untold agony for the architect of their recent pain and troubles. So much agony.

"I'm going to go in there and do some things that most people would find distasteful," Shepard said quietly.

"By 'most people' you mean me?" Storm questioned.

"Yes," Shepard confirmed. "But I see a gentleness in you and that's something that I never want to see sullied or extinguished, Hayley. You're a marine now but one day, I hope you'll aspire to be something more. Something beyond an instrument of the Alliance's will."

"What..what are you saying?" Hayley whispered.

"When we get off this rock, go to your brother, spend time with your family. Be an aunt to your nieces. You miss them don't you? Your family?"

Hayley nodded silently. Her brother's presence in her thoughts and her memories of him the only thing that had given her the strength to come this far. She thought about that old piano from back home. _Julian had better have kept it tuned._

"What are you going to do after all this?" Hayley's voice was barely a whisper and she felt more tears threatening. God, but she had always thought girls who cried all the time were such wimps and here she was, a regular leaking tap.

Shepard sighed. "I do what I always do."

Before she knew what she was doing, Hayley was pulling the other woman into a tight embrace. The weariness in Shepard's reply seemed too much for any one person to bear. At first Shepard felt stiff and unyielding but she relaxed and returned the embrace, resting her cheek on Hayley's shoulder. "I want you to come visit me some time, Commander. You have a right to see what you've spent your life fighting to preserve. You owe it to yourself." Breaking away from her CO, Storm stepped back, "And if you want to write me up for inappropriate conduct, I'll take that as well."

Shepard sniffed, wiped her eyes with a gloved hand and nodded. "Next shore leave, I'll make a side trip to Earth."

Turning back to the door, the Commander drew the katana, rolled her head from side to side and passed into what lay beyond.

---

Karrick stopped pacing as Shepard entered the office. Behind her the door slid shut. The human stood before him, eyeing him wordlessly. The blade in her right hand was pointed towards the floor and her fingers flexed around the hilt.

"So, here you are. What do you think you can accomplish by coming here, Shepard, hm?" Karrick stood by his desk, gun in hand and aimed at the floor.

"I'm going to kill you. But first I'm going to mess you up so badly you'll be _begging_ me to finish you off."

Karrick managed a laugh. The irony was delicious. Humans thought themselves so much better than his people - oh no, humans _never_ tortured and killed people, they were so far beyond that. "Killing me solves nothing," he hissed, feeling the rage build. "I die and what? The slaving operations will still go on. Pay Per Slay will live on."

"Maybe," Shepard replied walking slowly towards him. "But even so, _you _won't be around to profit from the deaths of any more of my people. I've learned to savour what small victories I can get. And maybe," Shepard continued, drawing closer to him. Karrick glanced at the gun in his hand. He could swing it up and fire any time. At this range, he couldn't miss.

The human smiled. "Maybe I'll come back here with the _Normandy_ and a full complement of marines and take this place apart a brick at a time."

"You'd risk open war between the Terminus Systems and your pathetic Council over a few slaves?" Karrick spat.

Before he could move, Shepard's hand whipped around, the blade flashing up faster than his eyes could follow. Blood gouted from his wrist as his hand, still holding the pistol flew across the room.

Speaking loudly to be heard over his screams, Shepard answered Karrick's question, "A single ship won't start a war, even the Council admitted as much. But that's a matter for later. For now..:"

---

Hayley stood as far from the entrance to Karrick's office as she could. Even so, she still heard him screaming. The screaming didn't stop for a long, long time.

Eventually, hardsuit splashed with blood, Shepard re-emerged. She cast a glance at the blade still held in one hand as though surprised to see it there. Her hand opened and it fell to the floor with a dull thump. "It's done," was all she said. Storm nodded wordlessly.

---

The krogan stood between the shattered entrance to the main building and the rover when they exited. Storm felt as though she'd been punched in the stomach. All this way, they'd come all this way and now...  
"Commander..." she trailed off. She halted beside Shepard, unsure what to do and settled for following her CO's lead. Shepard kept her arms by her sides, hands open.

"I suppose you're looking for some grand showdown for the benefit of your legion of fans?" Shepard asked. The krogan shook his head, gaze never wavering.

"No. I came to realise something, Shepard. We're warriors," he waved an arm to indicate them all. "One day, we will face each other across the field of battle and one of us will be the victor. But today is not that day. We're meant for better things than this...this _mockery _of battle," the krogan's voice rose in anger.

"So...you're letting us go?" Shepard half-believed this was an elaborate ruse, that even now, the game was still afoot.

"My name is Bex, Shepard and I greet you as a warrior," Bex held out a massive three-fingered hand. Storm opened her mouth to protest as Shepard stepped forward. Human and krogan stood, gazes locked as they shook hands.

"I'd say it's a pleasure to meet you but I'd be lying," Shepard said dryly.

Bex chuckled as he stepped back. "Until we meet again," was all he said before turning and ambling away.

Shepard watched him until he disappeared into the night before gesturing for Storm to get into the rover.

---

Jerr yawned widely, feeling his jaw pop as his mouth gaped open. He'd just about been finished with his guard shift when orders came down, doubling the watch on each ship at the spaceport. Apparently there'd been some trouble with one of the games; contestants were forgetting their place in the grand scheme of things and were believed to be making an escape attempt. Jerr laughed. Escape? It was preposterous. People who were captured and brought here either worked as slaves until they dropped dead or they were hunted until they dropped dead.

They most certainly did _not_ escape - before he could finish his thought, he felt something cold and hard press against the back of his head.

"Hi there," a voice, female and human spoke quietly into his ear. He swallowed hard, feeling the warm puff of breath on the skin of his neck. "Slowly remove the ammo block from your weapon." Jerr did so, feeling himself shaking.

"Good boy. Now hand the whole thing over to the Commander."  
As the woman spoke, a second human stepped around the ramp of the ship where he'd been standing and took hold of his weapon.

"Scuttlebutt says that a coupla humans are trying to escape, that about right?" the first woman said, still holding the gun on him.

"Ye-yeah," he managed to get out.

"Scuttlebutt's right."

"We're taking a ride in this ship," the one the first woman had referred to as the Commander said, "We're tired, hurt, and very very pissed off. If you help us get what we want and don't cause any trouble, you get to live. Screw with us and well....you can guess the rest."  
Jerr nodded frantically, the gun scraping against his neck with the motion.

"Good. Now we're walking up the ramp here, but before that I want you to get on the comm and have the crew assemble in the mess. If I even _think_ you're trying to pass along some kind of SOS I _will_ kill you and try my luck with somebody less stupid. Do you understand?" the Commander's voice left him in no doubt that she was completely serious.

Jerr spoke into his helmet mike, "All crew aboard the _Tempest _assemble in the mess immediately." Jerr waited while they acknowledged before reporting success.

"Move," the Commander ordered and the three of them marched up the ramp.

The ship was a typical freighter of modular design - the compartments could be removed and replaced whilst in drydock, converting the ship from a passenger vessel to a cargo hauler or troop carrier as needed. Shepard observed that the current configuration was for cargo and saw little in the way of passenger facilities. That was good.

The two humans with their batarian hostage entered the mess hall, which was crowded to the point of standing room only. "What is the meaning of this?" a batarian wearing a captain's uniform demanded.

"Back home, we call this a hijacking," Shepard said, feeling more cheerful than she had in ages. She brought up her shotgun, pointing it at the Captain. "There's two ways we can do this: the hard way, or _my _way." Shepard grinned, "They're both pretty much the same."

"The guards will-" the Captain began before Storm cut him off.

"The guards at the perimeter are dead," she smiled slightly, as her mood lightened. "Unless you want to join them, you'd do well to follow the orders of your new captain," she nodded towards Shepard.

The Captain turned his gaze from each member of his crew before looking back at the humans. "I want your word that my crew will be unharmed if we co-operate," he said, hating the way his voice sounded.

The woman nodded soberly, smile gone. "You have my word."  
The Captain turned to his first officer, "Mister Hira, prep the ship for launch, the rest of you get to your stations."

As the crew moved to bring the ship's systems online, Storm turned to the Commander, needing confirmation that this was really happening. She needed to hear Shepard say it. "We're really going home now?"  
Shepard nodded, keeping a close watch on the crew members as they sat at their stations. "We're really going home."

---

A/N: Sorry for the delay on this chapter but I let myself get distracted with another project I'm thinking of calling _Catapult_. I thought about having a knock-down drag-out fight between Bex and our reluctant heroines but I like the way they parted as warriors instead. And realistically, with the beatings they'd taken by that point, Bex would have killed and eaten them. Which would be a bad thing, obviously. As always, I appreciate your reviews.


	8. Epilogue

Epilogue: Home

Julian Storm stood on the wooden porch of the old homestead, arms folded over the railing, watching his daughters play in the front yard. Hayley would be arriving any time now. Typically, his younger sister had insisted on catching a taxi home rather than allowing him to collect her from the spaceport.

The family as a whole had been shocked to learn that his sister had failed to return from shore leave. At first, her superiors had believed her to be simply AWOL but Julian had known there was more to her disappearance than that - his sister wouldn't just up and fail to return without a good reason. Not long after, her status had been changed from AWOL to MIA which struck the family as patently ludicrous - how could she be missing in action whilst on leave? Then came unconfirmed reports that her CO, Shepard was also missing. Further enquiries to the Alliance regarding his sister's welfare were met by a wall of impenetrable silence. Julian threatened to take his concerns to the media, the Alliance threatened him with extremely dire consequences unless he ceased his enquiries. Shocked as he was by such tactics - the Alliance was there to help them wasn't it? - he agreed.

Instead, he took some time off from work, travelled to Elysium where the _Normandy _had last been in port and made some discreet enquiries, helped along by the flashing of some large wads of credits. The last anybody had seen of either his sister or Shepard had been when they'd exited a club popular with soldiers. It was like they'd been swallowed up by a black hole. Frustrated by his lack of progress and the stonewalling by the Alliance military, Julian returned home, sick at heart by the thought of never seeing Hayley again. His daughters, Jessica and Chloe, both five wanted to know when Aunty Hayley was coming to visit them because they missed her so much.

Julian, hating himself even as he did it, lied to his girls. He told them that Aunty Hayley was on a very special mission, out helping the Spectres. Jessica and Chloe oohed and ahhed, suitably impressed.

Then, barely a week ago, when he'd all but given up hope, a transmission from the very edges of Council space landed in his vidmail inbox. It was his sister, looking wrung out by whatever had happened to her, and she was alive. Alive and coming back home. Julian made sure that the girls and his wife were safely out of earshot before letting himself break down in relief.

Julian stood on the porch of the old homestead, arms folded on the railing as he watched the girls playing in the front yard. They were both wearing their Sunday-best dresses and had even consented to having little pink bows tied in their blonde hair. Julian checked his watch; she'd be here soon enough. Even as he glanced at the time, he heard the humming drone of an airborne taxicab as it descended from the cloudless blue skies and angled down towards the road outside the house.

Even before the vehicle had fully settled to the ground, amid a plume of dust, the girls were running towards it, yelling exuberantly.  
"Aunty Hayley! Aunty Hayley!"  
Julian wasn't far behind them.

Hayley paused only long enough to pay the driver and remove her duffel bag from the rear seat before she swept her twin nieces into a firm hug. "How are my two favourite girls? I've missed you so much!"

The taxi departed, kicking up another swirl of dust and leaves. Hayley barely noticed, caught up as she was with her nieces. They smelled of baby shampoo, talcum powder and the pure innocence of childhood.

Julian arrived then and she stood to meet him. Brother and sister hugged one another, as her nieces clung to their Aunt's legs.

Julian took his sister's bag as she walked towards the house, clasping a child's hand in each of hers. Julian walked behind them as they headed inside, a little stunned by his sister's appearance. She was twenty-seven but looked about five years older; whatever she'd been through had left a mark on her.

"You finally found time to paint the house?" she called over her shoulder. Julian nodded. He'd painted the house himself, hoping to distract himself from her disappearance. The double storey wooden structure was painted white with green trim on the gutters and window shutters.

"Jess, Chloe? You two go on inside, we have grown-up things to do," Julian told his daughters.

"Awww!" they cried in unison.

Hayley smiled, "It's OK. I'll be inside shortly." She smiled as the girls ran inside.

"They've gotten so big since the last time I saw them," she observed, turning back to her brother.

"Hayles, what happened to you?"  
She shook her head, strands of hair flying around her face. "I never want to think about...that again. Ever. I know you must have been worried out of your mind but I can't talk about it."  
Julian nodded as though he understood everything. He wished that he did.

Hayley slipped an arm around her older brother's waist as they walked to the house.

"You know the old piano?" she asked as they stepped inside the coolness of the house.  
"Yeah?"  
"You been keeping it tuned?"  
"Of course. I even find time to play it occasionally."  
"Remember how we used to sit and invent our own tunes?"  
Julian nodded silently. Hayley took him by the hand and led him deeper into the house, past the family holograms and into the family room, dominated by the grand piano.

Hayley released her brother, walked to the Steinway, pulled out the stool and sat. She shuffled over a bit to make room for her brother.

"Stool feels smaller than I remember it."

"Maybe your butt just grew too big?" he quipped.

Hayley smiled and resisted the urge to shove him to the floor. She didn't want to set a bad example for the girls after all.

Wordlessly, Hayley placed her fingers on the ivory keys and began to play. After a few seconds, Julian joined in. She was home. Finally, she was home.

The End

---

A/N: The 'piano scene' has been in my mind as an ending scene for a while and it came out roughly the way I envisaged it. I also want to extend my gratitude to everybody who took the time to read this and comment on it. I'd thank you all by name but I'm too lazy. :P


End file.
